LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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The Open Door. 



SERMONS AND PRAYERS 



Oscar C. MoCullooh, 



minister of 
Plymouth Congregational Church, 

indianapolis, indiana. 



Church doors should still stand open night and day, 

Open to all who come for praise or prayer, 

Laden with gift of lore or load of care ; 

And thus the church's door should ever be 

Portal of joy and welcomer of woe, 

'Open confessional for high and low, 

An unshut shrine where all may come and go." 



APR 23 

INDIANAPOLIS : i & Xt 

Press of Wm. B. Burford, 21 West Washington St. /^) ^7 fiT y\ 

1592* 



J3X7£33 
]V\£45@G 



Copyright, 1892, 

BY 

alice Mcculloch. 



N 



PREFACE. 



This collection of the sermons and prayers of Mr. 
McCulloch has been undertaken that those who found 
in his life and words an evidence of the continuous rev- 
elation of the love of God, a living source of impulse 
toward the highest, a practical direction of thought in 
lines of helpfulness, and a path to spiritual freedom, 
might have a lasting memorial of him. 

During 1890 and 1891 a faithful stenographic report 
was kept of the morning services. From these sermons 
those have been selected which seemed most fairly rep- 
resentative of the gospel he preached. The book con- 
tains also a few addresses which had been reported, 
upon special occasions, in other years. 

It was not Mr. McCulloch's habit to write his sermons ; 
only the briefest outline was put upon paper. ]$o at- 
tempt was ever made toward finished literary style. 
He was concerned with the matter not the manner of 
the sermon. To present clearly an earnest conviction 
and high aspiration, to hold out a hand of sympathy 
and helpfulness was his one aim. 

The only changes that have been made in the ser- 
mons and prayers, as originally delivered, are the 



/ 



IV PREFACE. 

omission of illustrations and phrases often repeated., 
and slight corrections of such errors of expression as 
are incidental to extemporaneous speaking. 

The sermon on Abundant Life was preached at the 
opening of the new church, January 27, 1884. Re- 
jected of Men was given September 27, 1891, the day 
of his last public ministry. 

At the urgent request of those who have known the 
comfort of his ministry in the hour of their deepest sor*- 
row, the Burial Service is added. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 

Abundant Life 1 

Sealed Orders 13 

The Mission of the Son of Man 29 

The Discontent of the Fortunate 45 

The Harvest of a Quiet Eye 63 

The Forgiveness of Sin 75 

The Innumerable Company 91 

Things Which Abide 105 

The Piety of the Intellect . -. 117 

The New Vow of Poverty 135 

The Ideal in Man 151 

The Joy of Life and the Life of Joy 169 

The Judgment Seat of Christ 187 

The Gate Called Beautiful . 203 

Bearing Witness to the Truth 219 

The Law of Mutual Aid 233 

The Business of the Father 251 

The Value of a Human Soul 271 

The Just Shall Live by Faith 287 

Things That Are Common 301 

The Perfect Law of Liberty 315 

Boys Are Scarcer Than Dollars 327 

Childe Koland 341 

Justice, DrviNE and Human 359 

The Light That is in Thee 373 

Bevelations of Death 387 

Kejected of Men , 405 

Burial Service 421 



" His was a life inspired by noble thought 
And dauntless courage. Firm, with purpose high, 
For Freedom, Justice, Truth, Humanity, 
Throughout his life he strenuously fought. 
He practiced what with fervid power he taught, 
And love, believe, act, fear not, was his cry, — 
God to the brave and just is ever nigh, 
And heaven must by the high strait way be sought. 
Conquered by fell disease, Life's battle done 
With all its pains, strife, cares — Death's victory won,- 
All that was mortal here is lain to rest. 
But his undying thoughts, words, acts, live on 
To lift the fallen, cheer and aid the oppressed." 



OSCAR C. McCULLOCH was born July 2, 1843, at 
Fremont, Ohio. His childhood and youth were passed 
in the average, uneventful way and there was little to 
indicate or foretell the trend his later life would take. 
He seems to have been impressed, however, from the 
first, with the seriousness of life and with an earnest 
desire to make the most of it. The time not spent in 
useful employment was given to the reading of the best 
books and even while about his work, or upon the street, 
he was memorizing and repeating choice bits of poetry 
— a habit which clung to him throughout life. This 
was a very valuable aid to him in later life, inasmuch 
as it became necessary to abandon school at fifteen and 
depend thereafter upon self-development. At that age 
he entered his father's drug store as a clerk and helped 
to share his business and family cares. Occupied thus, 
in attendance upon customers during the day, he spent 
his evenings reading Carlyle, history, poetry and the 
best of fiction. From his own experience at this time 
he reached the conclusion that a knowledge of, and taste 
for, the best literature are possible to any one who has a 
strong desire in that direction. 

In early manhood he went to Chicago and entered 
the service of a wholesale drug-house as traveling sales- 
man. He made long distances, and many times visited 
the Pacific Coast, the Rocky Mountain regions, and the 
southern States, in the discharge of his duties. He was 
remarkably successful in these relations and always 



Vlll MEMOIR. 

thereafter felt that his knowledge of men and his facil- 
ity in the management of the practical affairs of life 
came largely from this experience. During all this 
portion of his life his heart and mind were running in 
deep spiritual grooves. While staging in the far west 
or riding by rail, or while waiting for trains, his mind 
was at work on the deep things of soul-life. One of" 
the best sermons that he delivered in after years was 
thus written upon telegraph blanks at the shelf of the 
operator in the station at Little Rock. 

When in from his' trips he was always engrossed in 
associated christian work, and expended his time and 
effort in church and charitable interests. Among 
other definite objects he worked with the Christian 
Commission, of Chicago, and helped to carry on a church 
mission in the city. It was during these services that 
his friends discovered his readiness and effectiveness as 
a religious teacher, and urged that he give himself 
wholly to the ministry. Accordingly, at the age of 
twenty- four, in 1867, he gave up his lucrative business- 
connection and entered the Chicago Theological Semi- 
nary and in due time completed its course of study- 
Throughout his theological training he was noted for 
his powers of scripture interpretation, and the ability 
to grasp the true intent and meaning of the Word re- 
gardless of the ideas of the school-men and the copy- 
ists everywhere about him. Then, and always, he in- 
sisted upon his privilege of hearing the message him- 
self, and of transmitting it verbatim as God had spoken 
it to him. 

His first pastorate was at Sheboygan, Wis., where he- 
remained seven years. Here his thoughts took shape 
in the inauguration of plans for the material and spirit- 
ual benefit of his people, which were an earnest of his- 
greater usefulness in following years. His relations to 
his people were always most happy and cordial, and. 



MEMOIR. IX 

personal friendships were cemented that continued with- 
out abatement to life's close. 

In July, 1877, he came to Indianapolis, in answer to 
the call from Plymouth Church. He found the congre- 
gations small, the church edifice unattractive and mort- 
gaged to its full value, and the church itself struggling 
for life. Undaunted by these forbidding conditions he 
recognized an opportunity, and set himself resolutely 
to the task before him. The work quickened under 
his hand, the congregations grew steadily, and from 
many sources came cheer and help. It soon became 
apparent that a new church-home was a necessity ; and 
measures were inaugurated to accomplish that result. 

When the church property was sold it was found that 
but five hundred dollars remained after the payment of 
the debts. The question was, how can ground be se- 
cured and a building erected with such a bank account? 
It was at this juncture that the fine business brain of 
Mr. McCulloch manifested itself. The raising of a sum 
often thousand dollars in cash from an impecunious con- 
gregation ; the issue and sale at par of twenty-five thou- 
sand dollars' worth of fifteen-year six per cent, bonds ; 
the building and outfitting of the church, and the many 
steps of triumphant progress made therein since its 
completion in 1884, form a record of successful life-work 
paralleled by few. 

To estimate properly the services rendered by Mr. 
McCulloch during his fourteen working years in Indi- 
anapolis, would require a volume of space and must be 
left for other time and place. These it is unnecessary 
to recapitulate to those who knew him. The forces set 
in motion by him will go on, and many who have as 
yet not known of him will be gladdened by the abundant 
life which he made more possible ; for he was, first of 
all, a teacher, a minister of the kingdom, a preacher of 
righteousness. He, himself, regarded his pulpit as the 



X v MEMOIR. 

very center of all his work, and his place as a minister 
as his great opportunity. 

He brought to his work a soul born of God and in 
communion with him ; a mind cleared and lighted by 
the divine ray ; a heart susceptible to gracious love and 
tender pity, and lips touched as with the finger of God. 

He came with a great message upon his heart, the 
weight of which never lifted, and the word of which 
was Life. "I am come that they may have life and 
have it more abundantly." Men, women and children 
were to live a higher, broader, deeper and sweeter life. 
The Kingdom of Heaven that was declared to be at 
hand was to him but the Kingdom of Life and Hope 
and Love. 

He believed himself not only commissioned to preach, 
but chosen and sent. The voice of God in his own 
soul was immanent and conclusive. To preach its 
"Word, without hesitation or apology, accepting the 
consequences, was both his glad privilege and his high 
and sacred duty. 

The voice from his pulpit was never uncertain, but 
always clear, confident, strong; proclaiming the words 
of life and hope, of truth and soberness, as they came 
warm and fresh from the heart of God. 

That simple life lived in far-off Judea was a per- 
petual charm to his imagination, and laid a spell upon 
his heart that was never broken. To come to Jesus 
was to believe what he said, to make actual his thoughts, 
and to apply his principles in daily life, To preach 
Christ was to persuade people that the Sermon on the 
Mount was not given to be read' only and wondered at, 
to be explained in long sermons and analyzed in learned 
disquisitions, but was to be lived — lived in the home, 
the office, the shop, the field, the street, by the road- 
side, wherever men and women meet their kind. 



MEMOIR. XI 

"All life," he said, " whether consciously or not, rests, 
if it builds for aye, on these principles of Jesus Christ. 
The business of the preacher is to reveal this ; to show 
that trade, politics, law, medicine, industry, all rest on 
great nature-principles which, springing out of the 
heart of God, take on his name. It is this that trans- 
figures life, makes it more than a scramble." 

On these ideas Plymouth church was founded. It 
was organized as "A Church of Jesus Christ, gathered 
in his Name, and to do his Work; declaring union in 
faith and love with all who love him." Simply a com- 
mon fealty to Jesus Christ, loyalty to his idea, fidelity 
to his principles, and devotion to his objects. 

The conditions of membership in his church were 
made as simple as the invitation " Come, follow me." 
The response required was nothing further than the old 
answer, " I will leave all and follow thee." " When the 
call was made in '61," he once said, " it was not to sol- 
diers, but to men. 4 Come, rally round the flag.' 'But 
we know nothing of war.' ' True, but the situation 
will teach you. The march, the fight, the camp, will 
make soldiers of you.' So with church membership. 
' Come,' he said. 'But we are not Christians.' 'Well, 
take up the Christian idea ; resolve to live by the Chris- 
tian principle of holding your life high above low pas- 
sions, and for the service of others, and you will become 
Christians." 

This was the idea of membership in his church. 
It was made open to all who would take up thought- 
fully and earnestly the Christian life. The church thus 
became responsible only to God, acknowledged no 
authority save the authority of truth, appealed to no 
creed but the creed of the individual conscience. 

The membership and attendance, the general composi- 
tion of this church is, of course, at once heterogeneous 



Xll MEMOIR. 

and unique. It consists largely of the scattered from 
other denominations ; the sheep without a shepherd, 
and those who have had no church-home, traditions or 
memories. Outside of the regular attendants, " the solid 
circle of five hundred," are to be found all kinds and 
conditions, the transient, the shifting, the unchurched, 
the unknown and the friendless. 

This congregation, composed of so many diverse ele- 
ments and apparently so loosely held, has always sus- 
tained an exceptionally high moral and social character. 
In the fourteen years of his pastorate no trouble has oc- 
curred, no differences arisen, no breath of scandal, social, 
official or financial, has ever touched one member of 
the congregation. It has been united and enthusiastic 
in the support of the Pastor in all his undertakings, 
reasonably regular in attendance upon the services, and 
remarkably liberal in its subscriptions. The entire ex- 
pense of the church proper has been borne by the 
voluntary offerings of the people. From each accord- 
ing to his ability, to each according to his need, has 
been the measure of expectation. 

But to fuse all these elements into a mass, to inspire 
them with high ideas of life, to teach them the import- 
ance and value of church membership, to arouse their 
energies and unify their efforts, to teach them to speak 
plainly the word duty, was no easy task, and was neces- 
sarily the work of time. It took courage, faith, hope, 
patience and love — a looking forward to the day after 
to-day. It determined the character and method of the 
preaching and the kind of work that was undertaken. 

To hold such a congregation is a test for the powers 
of the most gifted. The preaching must be varied, 
cheerful and attractive, yet plain, clear, and strong. It 
mu3t reach alike the learned and the unlearned, the old 
and the young. It must warn the erring, strengthen 



MEMOIR. Xlll 

the weak, comfort the sorrowing and inspire the con- 
tented. It must edify the regular attendant, while it 
-entertains the stranger within the gates. 

Mr. McCulloch fulfilled these requirements. It was 
the perpetual delight of his friends and the wonder and 
admiration of all who heard him. Beside his superior 
mental and spiritual endowments, he had many per- 
sonal characteristics that contributed largely to his suc- 
cess . 

His manner was simple and direct, in just keeping 
with his character. His style was incisive, confident 
and persuasive, easily challenging a ready and eager 
attention. His voice was a rich, tenor, clear and pene- 
trating, yet sympathetic and restful, easy to listen to 
and lingering long. His words came with rare spon- 
taneity and fluency, and were usually set with beauti- 
ful imagery and delicate fancy. 

His preaching, withal, was earnest, lucid, feiwent, 
forceful and always to a point. It abounded in a won- 
derful wealth of thought and a wide range of poetic 
and practical illustration. It was ever pervaded with 
a fine spiritual sense that indicated a rare insight into 
the deep things of Grod, and it bore the stamp of an 
originality that gave it the authority of a " Thus saith 
the Lord." 

Yet through it all was ever heard the one strain to 
which the whole was keyed : the Kingdom is here, we 
must bring it in; the people must see that the King- 
<dom of Heaven can be made the Kingdom of Earth ; 
the Abundant Life is the just due of all classes and 
conditions of people ; it is the rightful heritage of 
every child born into the world, and it is ours to see 
that he comes to his own ; the common life — the life 
•of the many — can be elevated, spiritualized and trans- 
figured by finding upon what foundations of duty it 
rests, and showing to what vast issues it is bound. 



XIV MEMOIR. 

Therefore, the common people heard him gladly — 
heard him with a great leap of the heart that said we r 
too, are men and women and can do these things. 

The question with him was not " How can the Church' 
reach the masses ? " hut " How can the masses reach 
the Church ? " He helieved many of them would like 
to come. He thought an open door with a warm wel- 
come and contact with honest human hearts given to the 
service of Jesus Christ, would attract them. In this he 
was not mistaken. The services were always well at- 
tended, often filling the church and making it neces- 
sary to close the doors and turn many away. 

But preaching the word was not enough. He was 
not content with being a seer into the deep and the 
hidden, a sayer of the true and needful thing; but he 
must perform his part as a doer of the Word. The 
broken-hearted were not healed, the captives were yet 
imprisoned, the blind could not see, and many had not 
yet heard the good news. 

Life is joy, he said; it is thought, beauty and recre- 
ation, as well as religion. Education, literature, art, 
music, charity, are all parts of the great whole for 
which the Church must care. These elements, and 
many others, were incorporated into the church, and by 
an elastic organization developed into a veritable insti- 
tution of culture within its gates. To enlarge the scope 
of life to the many who were in some way bound, was 
the object, and its beneficial influence has been felt far 
beyond the limits of the church and the city. 

Education in all its forms was an immanent and con- 
stant theme. His interest in it never abated, nor did 
his efforts to promote it ever tire. His first appearance 
in the city outside of his pulpit was to lecture to the 
teachers of the public schools on education — The Science 
of Childhood. When Jesus announced the value of the 



MEMOIR. XV 

individual soul, the great reason for educating every one 
was given. The Child of God must know his rights and 
understand his duties. 

He felt that the work must begin with the children 
and the young. A little child is the symbol of Chris- 
tianity and late news from God. " Unless ye become as 
little children ye can not enter the Kingdom of Heaven." 
Children are the hope of the world, and every one of 
them divinely born. They must be kept pure, if pos- 
sible, as when dropped from the Infinite Heart. The 
Church must not be to them a dreadful and gloomy 
place, but a familiar and pleasant home. They must 
love to come to it, associating it with thoughts of play 
and good times, as well as with thoughts of God. Child- 
life and Church-life must, therefore, be interwoven. 
The Church must include the children and supplement 
the kindergarten and the school by giving them a large 
place in its thought. 

Besides the Sunday-school he gave them the first 
word in every morning service, which they attended 
constantly and in large numbers. This prelude or 
children's sermon was a feature of the day. He pro- 
vided special services at Christmas and Easter, and 
arranged for them flower days, days in the woods, 
June picnics, Autumn festivals, special socials, romps 
and dolls' receptions. 

The Sunday-school has some peculiar and original 
features. It is in large part the creation of the Pastor's 
personal influence and effort, and is a true scion of the 
Church. For years he attended it every Sunday morn- 
ing. He would lead the singing and the other general 
exercises, and directed largely the work of the differ- 
ent classes. His talks to the School were appropriate 
and felicitious, and touched with master-hand the 
questions that lie close to the lite of the young. His 

2* 



XVI MEMOIR. 

prayers offered with the children were most touching 
and beautiful. 

He made special effort to keep the older children and 
young people in the School by suggesting lines of study 
in which he thought they would be interested. He be- 
lieved that pupils should pass from these higher classes 
into the church as naturally as a boy glides from twenty 
to twenty-one into all the privileges and powers of cit- 
izenship. So he formed a confirmation class each year 
of those who desired to enter it, and after instructing 
the members of it in regard to the Christian life, its 
potentialities and its duties, received them into mem- 
bership in the church. 

Plymouth Institute is also a child of the Church, and 
a part of it. Though its work be wholly secular, it en- 
larges life, builds up character, quickens sympathies 
and brings the Church nearer to the people. Organized 
originally to give young people and others employed 
during the day an opportunity for study and improve- 
ment in the evening, it has grown largely in many di- 
rections. It has given attention to a great variety of 
subjects, ranging from arithmetic, penmanship, short- 
hand and physical culture, through history, travel, 
civil government, German and French, to studies in 
Emerson and Browning, Homer and Dante. Its work 
of a distinctive literary character is of a very high 
order. 

Its reading room, supplied with all the latest publica- 
tions, has been open and free to all. Its historical lec- 
tures, some eight or ten each year, intended especially 
for the young, have been listened to by thousands with 
enthusiasm and delight. This was one of the many rills 
that fed the general Church-stream. 

The Church at large and popular amusements have 
long been divorced. Plymouth lecture course was in- 
stituted to heal this breach. Its object is to connect 



MEMOIR. XV11 

the idea of the Church with popular instruction and the 
re-creation of life. The committee aimed to present 
the best there is at the least cost. How well they suc- 
ceeded the public can testify. The very best lecturers, 
readers and musicians of this country and of Europe 
have followed one another, each year, upon its platform. 
To rest the tired, to encourage the desponding, to 
quicken the dull, is certainly a legitimate work of the 
Church. It flows directly from the conception of life 
that Jesus held. 

The song-service and illustrated sermon were pioneer 
work, but successful from the first. The house was 
tilled each time with a quiet audience, attentive and 
sympathetic, made up largely of those who would not 
attend church under ordinary conditions. They came 
in answer to a demand. The illustrated sermon brought 
noble art and beautiful pictures to the service of religion. 
The life of Jesus was illuminated by it, the old story 
made new ; the holy fields were retrodden and the 
scenes that he saw made real. The picture is the oldest 
form of record and communication, and has never lost 
its power. The eye, as well as the ear, is a gateway of 
the soul. That which is beautiful, as well as that which 
is true, can lift up and inspire. 

Mention should be made of the Ladies' Union, with 
its varied features of social and benevolent work, the 
Young People's Circle, the King's Daughters, and the 
monthly Church- Supper, which were features and 
factors in the life of the church instituted by Mr. 
McCulloch. 

No survey of the work can be anything but super- 
ficial. Life comes on currents we can not see, and 
flows in channels far beyond our reach or knowledge. 
No statistics can gather its influence, nor tabulate the 
results of it. Here is an attempt to bring the abun- 
dant life of Christ into all human experiences, and 



XV111 MEMOIR. 

shed the light of his gospel everywhere upon the com- 
plex problems of daily life. 

So this minister did his work, aligning his church 
with all modern life and laying his tribute upon all cur- 
rent thought. He found his helpers at every turn. 
He found them in all denominations, among people of 
every faith, and among those of no faith. He recog- 
nized them all as fellow-workers in their place and 
way to bring in the Kingdom. 

He welcomed every authentic word of science as 
news from God. All history was to him the fulfillment 
of prophecy. Every great truth set in literature or 
sung by poet was sacred scripture, an inspired word. 
The Bible was the great literary and historical treas- 
ure-house of the race. Its message was true, not be- 
cause it was there, but there because it was true. The 
Spirit that gave it forth has spoken its word in all gen- 
erations. And any one who shall now stand in the 
eternal ways with patient heart and expectant spirit 
will find in the intuitions of the souJ the voice of God 
to the heart of man. 

But his mission was only begun where the work of 
the church pastor is believed to end. There were no 
bounds to his parish as there were no closed doors to 
his church. 

Soon after coming to Indianapolis he attended the 
annual meeting of the Benevolent Society. So few 
were present and so hopeless was the outlook, that the 
propriety of disbanding was discussed. Mr. McCulloch 
made some suggestions regarding the opportunities for 
future usefulness, with such force that it was moved to 
make him President of the society. He was elected in 
November, 1878, and re-elected each succeeding year, 
holding the office until his death. 

He made investigation the basis of relief, and his 
hand was immediately felt in the activity of the work. 



MEMOIR. XIX 

The record of visits and investigation was opened 
Jan. 20, 1879. 

In the following April an employment agency was 
started to assist the needy in finding work. 

The Charity Organization Society was organized in 
December of the same year, and began its work about 
the first of January, 1880. 

In the fall of 1880 the Friendly Inn and woody ard 
was opened. 

During the next year a vigorous and successful effort 
was made to overcome the abuses practiced in the 
county asylum. 

About the same time the Children's Aid Society was 
formed for consideration of the care of dependent and 
neglected children. Out of this work grew the present 
free kindergarten. 

Preliminary steps were taken in December, 1882, for 
the opening of the Flower Mission Training-School for 
Nurses, and the work began in September, 1883. 

In this year, too, he was active in securing the estab- 
lishment of the county work-house. 

The free bath was inaugurated in 1885. 

In the same year a trained nurse commenced work 
among the sick poor. 

The Dime Savings and Loan Association was organ- 
ized April, 1887. 

Early in 1889 the laws creating the State Board of 
Charities and the Board of Children's Guardians, which 
he formulated, were passed. 

The Summer-Mission for Sick Children was started 
m 1890. 

The work of establishing Home-Libraries was begun 
in the present year. 

No mention can be made of all the labor necessary 
for preparing public opinion and bringing about the 
organization and support of all these institutions. It 



XX MEMOIR. > 

is enough to say that the amount of labor performed im 
the comparatively few years was very great and con- 
tinuous. His work was an unceasing labor of love, 
his courage undaunted, his energy tireless. The words 
of the record but feebly portray the grand spirit of hu- 
man sympathy that so completely molded every thought 
and step of a life consecrated to the happiness oi 
others. 

Under his direction and through his efforts the As- 
sociated Charities of Indianapolis became the most 
effective of any in the country. 

For years Mr. McCulloch was a leading member of 
the National Conference of Charities and Correction, 
and at the session held in Baltimore, in 1890, he was 
made President. The Conference convened in Indian- 
apolis in May 1H91, so that he had not only the duties- 
of presiding officer, but, in a certain sense those of 
host, to fulfill. In this hospitality the entire populace 
joined to help him extend a most generous welcome. 
The Conference was a most successful one. Every de- 
tail had been arranged in advance, and Mr. McCul- 
loch's skill and tact was apparent at every session. 
The alert mind and strong guiding hand brought 
everything into harmony of action. It proved to be 
his last public appearance in connection with the chari- 
ties to which he had given so much of his life and 
effort. 

Those who knew Mr. McCulloch only in his public 
capacity as a preacher of noble living and an organizer 
of true charity, admired and respected him. But 
those who knew him as an intimate friend, those 
whom he had comforted in sorrow and counseled in 
anxiety, these saw. his real heart, and had a true con- 
ception of the sweetness of his nature. Love, com- 
passion and kindness were the very atmosphere of his 
being. 



MEMOIR. XXI 

He was always at the service of every noble cause 
and " the cause he knew not he searched out." In 
truth he gave his life because of this insatiable desire 
to be " about his Father's business." If he had not 
lived so earnestly he would have lived longer. Tired 
and worn, he went to Europe in June, 1891, hoping 
to find in travel and change of scene the rest he so 
-much needed, but before the end of the vacation his 
heart turned with love and longing towards home and 
heart-friends. 

After his return he preached one Sunday ; and then 
with cheerfulness and patience he awaited the coming 
of God's messenger. 

He died December 10, 1891. 



' ' Who at all times and everywhere gave his strength to the 
weak, his substance to the poor; his sympathy to the suffering, 
his heart to God." 



ABUNDANT LIFE 



HE LEADS HIS OWN. 

How few who, from their youthful day, 
Look od to what their life may be ; 

Painting the visions of the way 
In colors soft, and bright, and free. 

How few who, to such paths have brought, 

The hopes and dreams of early thought ! 

For God, through ways they have not known, 
Will lead his own. 

The eager hearts, the souls of fire, 
Who pant to toil for God and man ; 

And view with eyes of keen desire 
The upland way of toil and pain ; 

Almost with scorn, they think of rest, 

Of holy calm, of tranquil breast, 

But God, through ways they have not known, 
Will lead his own. 

What matter what the path shall be ? 

The end is clear, and bright to view ; 
We know that we a strength shall see, 

What e'er the day may bring to do. 
We see the end, the house of God, 
But not the path to that abode ; 

For God, through ways they have not known, 
Will lead his own. 

— Hymns of the Ages. 



ABUNDANT LIFE. 



' ' I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it 
more abundantly.'" 

John x, 10. 



f*\F the many words of Christ, my thoughts dwell 
' most upon those where he speaks of life. Life 
»P with him was the use and enjoyment of all the 
faculties of our being. Eternal life is to know God. 
Finding life is finding what we are, and what we are for. 
Life is a joyful service. It is a beautiful thing to live — 
to live in harmonious response to the call of the many- 
colored wisdom of God. Fullest life is realized when 
every faculty is called into play by the manifestation of 
God in nature. Without is beauty — in flower and form, 
in wonderful sunset, shimmering sea, and the face of 
mau. Within, responding- to it, is a perception of 
beauty, a joy, a growing beautiful. Without is music, 
the rhythmic beat of worlds that go singing along 
their measureless path, the tinkle of rain, the song of 
birds, and the laugh of children. Within is a recogni- 
tion of rhythmic order, melody, harmony and song. 
Outside is truth — things as they really are — the hidden 
laws, the methods and the meaning of creation. With- 
in is a perception of order, a desire to know. Outside 
is a moral order — " a unity of morals running through 
all animated nature ; " each thing under authority. 
Justice lies at the heart of a crystal and of a man. 



4 ABUNDANT LIFE. 

The very stones keep faith with God and "joyful 
the stars perform their shinings." Within is a sense 
of obligation, duty — a love of justice. Without is a 
world of joys and sorrows — humanity in all its pathos. 
Beauty, music, truth, righteousness, humanity — these 
are the mind and heart of God impressed on nature — 
immanent in nature. And life is responding to them, 
fulfilling them. Anything less than this is incomplete 
life. He who lacks sight or hearing is shut out from 
some of the beauty and truth of God. He who has 
no eye for beauty, no ear for music, no heart for de- 
light and sympathy, no desire to know, no wish to be 
good, is incomplete. Some one of the thousand strings 
which God gave him to make music with is not struck. 
The Creator hears no music from it. 

The Christ, in his day and age, saw life as a whole. 
He saw the beauty in nature and in humanity ; saw the 
truth, and loved to think God's thoughts after him; 
saw the divine goodness in rainfall and sunshine ; saw 
the justice which binds man to man in social union; 
saw all this and responded to it, " I do always the 
things that please Thee." 

This is why he has been in the mind and heart of the 
world ever since. The whole, the complete life was in 
him. He enjoyed life, overcame difficulty, used every 
means for helping others. Can you doubt that he 
would have kindly criticised all ideas of life which 
were less worthy ? A young man came running to him 
who was exceedingly rich, but he had not life, for he 
had found no place to serve. Nieodemus had not life, 
because he was turning over musty parchments, shaping 
his life by dead opinions of men. Pilate was not alive, 
since he did not, and dared not do justice. To the 
monk he would have said, " This is not life, this fast- 
ing and pain ; " to the artist, "Life is beauty, but more 
— it is thinking high thoughts and doing noble deeds." 



ABUNDANT LIFE. 5 

Life is when every faculty is employed ; the glad leap 
of muscle to its task ; the thrill of nerve ; the quick- 
ening of Kepler's mind; the patience of Darwin's ob- 
servation ; the harmony of Beethoven's music ; the 
philanthropy of Wilberforce and Garrison ; the human- 
ity of Florence Nightingale; the love of fathers and 
mothers and children. The life of the Christ is the 
possible life of each one of us, " writ large." It is the 
life which God loves to give us all. It is the birthright 
of each one. It is the life we are to try to give to all 
who by birth or unfortunate surroundings or by mis- 
fortune miss it. 

About us we see those who emphasize single points 
of life. He gave all equal emphasis. Life was duty, but 
life was delight. Life was worship, but life was prac- 
tical world-business. Life was translation on Mount 
Hermon, but it was also healing lunatics at its base. 
Following Christ is but another way of saying live ! 
" My springs are in Thee," says the Psalmist. All life 
is nourished by the secret springs which are in God. 
The Christ life was thus fed. He was in immediate 
contact with God. From Him came his thoughts and 
affections, sympathies and comforts. Christ meant to 
lead us there, to see, hear, know for ourselves. " The 
Father himself loveth you." " I am the way " is the 
Oriental way of saying "I am in the way, come with 
me." "I am seeking the truth, join me." " I am living 
the life, follow me." 

Life can not be nourished by facts, traditions, opin- 
ions ; but only by the truths which come directly from 
God. Each must go directly to God, commune with 
the voice within, interrogate the divine instincts, the 
sacred intuitions. God has many things to say, the 
inspiration is perpetual, the revelation is continuous. 
History is full of voices. It shows the movement of 
eternal righteousness ; how nations rise and fall through 



6 ABUNDANT LIFE. 

moral causes ; that "tho' ministers of justice and power 
fail, justice and power do not fail." 

Humanity feeds this higher life. The pity of men 
for suffering, the sympathy which runs from heart to 
heart, the affections of the home, the assertions of 
friendship, the depths of forgiveness — these are but the 
uncoverings of the heart of God. Nature is a source of 
life; from her we learn of awful forces that move on 
mighty business; of "fire and hail, ice and vapor, 
stormy wind fulfilling his word;" of depths in the 
divine nature, into which human thought may not 
penetrate ; of love and care for little things ; a Provi- 
dence which impartially feeds the raven and the little 
child, forgetting none and favoring none. 

Art, too, tells of life. Longfellow told Mary Ander- 
son to let no day go by without reading a beautiful 
poem, hearing a beautiful song, looking at a beautiful 
picture. And art has always nourished a full and 
varied life. To live completely Ave must go as Christ 
did, to the source, God; must mingle with humanity; 
must read history ; must know nature. 

This is the idea of life which inspires our work and 
worship. It is good to live. Life is worth living. It 
is a good world ; not old and worn- out, but new and 
just beginning its higher development; and to-day is 
the best day of life. One may w^ake every morning and 
think of each question as an open one. The world 
belongs to God; the great essentials— air, light and 
water — can not be alienated. Old abuses are dying out. 
"I beheld a new heaven and a new earth." How easily 
we forget the disagreeable things of last year. A good 
man can not remember that he ever had any trouble. 
Even sorrow fades away in a glorified memory and 
pains become pearls. No one has ever been able seri- 
ously to harm the world or interfere with its order. 
There is room for all ; food for all ; work for all. Each 



ABUNDANT LIFE. 7 

new-born child comes clothed with authority. He has 
come to his own. God loves the strong beat of the 
heart ; the assertive will ; the generous impulse ; the 
artists' creations ; the laugh and leap of boys ; the 
young man rejoicing in his youth ; the mother playing 
with her child ; young lovers ; students that keep watch 
by night ; wise men that follow stars ; poets that know 
"the secret of a weed's plain heart;" business stretch- 
ing out its iron arms. God loves life; the song-life of 
Burns ; the hero-worshipping Carlyle ; the white-souled 
Emerson ; the nature-loving Wordsworth ; Dickens, 
who sympathized with men and saw the heart of them ; 
Lamb, gentle and laughing. God loves children — all 
children, from the Babe of Bethlehem to the lowest. 

Now, it is the idea of the Christian life, and the rela- 
tion of the love of God toward it, that this church is 
built to represent and exists to carry out. Building it 
has been but putting brick and wood around an idea. 
Life precedes organization ; before the body is the soul. 
Around this idea the walls of our church have risen. 
We have sought to make it cheerful, simple, burdening 
no one beyond ability. We have sought to build it 
quietly, "without sound of hammer/' It is to be a 
meeting-house ; a place where people meet. We meet 
with each other like the "handful of Jerusalem, so 
strangely assorted, of court lady, army officer, wayside 
beggar, and forgiven sinner." We do not know each 
others' opinions, philosophies, beliefs ; but we agree to 
live the life of Christ and let God settle the differences. 

It is a place for worship. We come, burdened with 
care, with forebodings, sorrows. We sing, and pray 
and talk. Here will come the merchant, tired with 
talking about values ; the teacher, the artisan, the 
young man, pressing his way into the crowded business 
or profession ; young women, choosing the better part. 
It must be to all such a place of life. It must inspire 



8 ABUNDANT LIFE. 

to loftier ideals, urge to nobler motives, disclose wiser 
methods. It must be a place of weekly renewal of 
sympathies and affections ; a guard against the dead- 
ening influences of the world on its material side. It is 
a building not too good for daily use — for use in the 
practical business of life. We have written over it : 
" The gates of it shall not be shut by day." 

The church was once the town meeting-house; the 
cannon that protected the village was mounted on the 
top of it ; school meetings were held in it. In East 
Montpelier, Vermont, to-day, the election is held in the 
Church. We of Indianapolis are forced to enter the chute 
and vote in a saloon. Surely, voting in a Church is bet- 
ter. So we have built this for use — for everything that 
helps man. It is the home of our children who are to 
grow up to think of it as a joyful place. There, if lost, 
we will seek them, not sorrowing, but knowing they 
will be about their Father's business. It is the home 
of the stranger, the young man in the store, or office, 
or shop ; the business man stopping here over Sunday. 
We have built it for all sorts and conditions of men. 
It is our house of work, as well as our home. Here we 
have business to do — our Father's business. We are 
to bring life to others. 

This is one thing I notice as I go about the streets, 
how few of the people I meet show in their faces that 
they enjoy life. Each one seems to have missed some- 
thing of that fullness where each faculty takes its place 
in the economy of Grod and does the thing it was mean 
to do, singing as it works. The children grow up 
ignorant, are early put to work ; become mere money- 
making machines, or machines for others to make money 
out of. They know little of the laws of thought, of 
health, of order, of courtesy. They get into difficul- 
ties, strike against the laws and fall back bruised, won- 
dering what it means. I know that they do not mean 



ABUNDANT LIFE. V) 

to do wrong ; they are as sheep without a shepherd. I 
think of the many boys and girls who begin life's work 
without life's strength. They are compelled to labor 
on the lowest planes. They have no practical knowl- 
edge and the doors of opportunity are closed because 
they do not know the right word. 

There is a dreariness in the life of the average man 
and woman — monotonous — 'full of thankless days. 
" They toil, and toil ; a toil that reaps no end but never- 
ending toil and endless woe." When they stop work- 
ing they are too tired to read, too tired to rest. They 
go to the saloon, or to gossip. No bright, cheerful 
places are open to them. I think of the young men 
in this city who came here to make their fortunes. 
They have small salaries, can just get along. They are 
in cheap boarding houses. They have no friends and 
soon cease to go to church. They miss the country air, 
for they are shut up all day in dark offices and dusty 
factories. When evening comes, there is nowhere to 
go. How many nights I have sat in billiard saloons, 
because, in all the great city of Chicago I knew no one 
outside of business. They have good purposes, gener- 
ous and right impulses, but no friend to say " come." 

I am familiar with the life of the poor in this city. 
Of anything more wretched I can not conceive. Most 
of them live so close to the line of actual want that a 
week out of work, or a month's sickness, brings hunger 
and cold, or debt. Now, to all these a fuller, happier life 
is possible. Nature is kind. Lying dormant in these 
souls are capacities for art, music, intelligence, skill, suc- 
cess. Here lies our work. This church can take these 
people and supply, in a measure, the missing conditions. 
Something may be done to draw out the undeveloped 
life. We have long gathered little children into day 
school and Sunday-school, but we must carry them fur- 
ther. We must gather them into industrial schools ; 



10 ABUNDANT LIFE. 

must plan entertainments for them; must teach them 
the meanings of things ; must cause them to wonder ; 
must draw boys in from the streets because we can give 
them better times. We must offer opportunities to the 
young by which they shall get a better education ; open 
up to them the treasures of literature ; bring them into 
contact with the great minds of the past; make them 
acquainted with the heroes of the world. We must 
offer entertainments which shall make the tired laugh 
and wonder; teach them wiser ways of living. I want 
to teach the poor that their best friend is the Christ, 
and that all good is " In His Name." 

This whole matter lies clearly denned in my mind. 1 
know exactly the line which I shall urge this Church 
to take. It is that of educational Christianity. I would 
make of this Church a " people's college." What Peter 
Cooper did in a large way, we must undertake in a 
small way. The Rose Polytechnic Institute gives in- 
dustrial education to our most advanced young men, 
but who thinks of the boys and girls at the critical age 
between twelve and fifteen? Our schools teach the 
"three R's," but who teaches the practical things^ of 
life ; the laws of pure living ; of good books ; of na- 
ture ; of courteous manners ? This Church is to give 
itself to this work. Opening schools of sewing, or in- 
dustry ; classes in drawing, design,- music, language; 
instituting talks on literature and science ; arranging 
lectures, concerts, exhibitions ; meeting weekly in 
religious, social and friendly ways ; the rich and the 
poor meeting together, the Lord the maker of them 
all; while through all, like the simple original melody 
running through varied music, is the thought of loyalty 
and love to Jesus Christ. 



ABUNDANT LIFE. 11 



Teach us to pray, God, that we mock Thee not 
with words, nor come formally, nor because custom has 
taught us to come, but rather with the up-springing of 
the glad feelings that are in the heart. Help us to 
pray with the spirit, even though no voice is heard. 
In the hush and silence prayer is being made. The 
spirit is praying to its God : I am hungry, feed 
me; I am confused, lead me out into the light; I am 
troubled, give me peace. So prayer is being made un- 
consciously by us and for us, and each one, though the 
lips move not, and the heart may not be conscious of 
expressing its thought, is putting up a prayer to God. 
Let even the little hearts feel in this hush and silence 
that God is here. JSTot simpl}' because this house is a 
house named with his name, and this a day set apart 
from other days, but because wheresoever there is seek- 
ing there is the answering spirit. Now let us draw near 
to Thee ; we do not need to ask Thee to draw near to 
us. We do not need to ask that the sun may shine or 
the rain fall ; it is for us to take these things that are 
provided in the wise and tender and all-thoughtful 
providence of God. The great thoughts that circulate 
through the world, the deep feelings which bathe every 
soul like a tide that washes every shore, say : God is 
here. We ought to be still and know that Thou art 
God. Our Heavenly Father, help us to value the things 
that are next to us which we overlook. Let us not 
make long journeyings to the tomb of Christ, but short 
and easy pilgrimages to the homes of suffering. Not 
tedious memorizing of long passages from this, Thy 
Word, but hiding in the heart some text which is a com- 
fort in sorrow* and a strength in weakness; not the 
long bending of the knees in prayer, but the lifting up 



12 ABUNDANT LIFE. 

of the spirit in gratitude with its petition to Thee, is 
the service which is pleasing to Thee. Bless every 
young man, God, and make him strong and true. 
Bit— jvery young woman, and give an earnestness to 
her life with all its sweetness, for the time will come 
when just this is what she will be called upon to pos- 
ts in the seriousness of life. Bless the little children, 
too ; we pray that their feet may be led in pleasant 
ways and that friends may be raised up for them. 
VTe patiently and resolutely go on even in the dark : 
Thou wilt lead the blind in wavs they know not and 
the sorrowing into perfect peace. Comfort those that 
mourn : restore those that wander, and forgive those 
that sin. through Jesus Christ. 



SEALED ORDERS. 



SEALED ORDERS. 

Our life is like a ship that sails some clay 
To distant waters, leagues aud leagues away ; 
Not knowing what command to do and dare 
Awaits her when her eager keel is there. 

Birth, love, and death are ports we leave behind, 
Borne on by rolling wave and rushing wind ; 
Bearing a message with unbroken seal, 
Whose meaning fain we would at once reveal. 

It may not be. But ever and anon 
Some order, sealed at first, we ope and con ; 
So learn what next, so east or westward fly, 
And ne'er again that port of Birth espy. 

Where lies our course in vaiu we seek to know. 
" Go forth," the Spirit says, and forth we go; 
Enough that, wheresoever we may fare, 
Alike the sunshine and the storm we share. 

But still not knowing, still with orders sealed, 
Our track shall lie across the heavenly field ; 
Yet there, as here, though dim the distant way, 
Our strength shall be according to our day. 

The sea is His. He made it, and His grace 
Lurks in its wildest wave, its deepest place. 
Our truest knowledge is that He is wise ; 
What is our foresight to His sweet surprise ? 

J. W. Chadwick. 



SEALED ORDERS. 



' ' Jesus answered and said unto Peter : What I do thou knoivest 
not now; but thou shalt knoiv hereafter." 

John xiii, 7. 
READ the other dav that the United States reve- 

%j 

nue cutter, Russia, which sails in the Behring Sea 
in order to take up the sealing vessels there, was 
at Port Townsend with sealed orders. Now, the phrase 
"sealed orders," is not nearly as common as it used to be 
before the days of steam and the telegraph. What it 
means in this case is, that the Secretary of the Navy has 
sent to the commander of the revenue cutter, Russia, a 
sealed packet which he is not to open until he is at sea. 
That packet, when it is opened, will tell him exactly 
where to go and what to do. It is not proper to open 
it before, because the information, which is important, 
might get into the newspapers — somebody might tell it, 
and the ends desired could not be accomplished. Sup- 
pose a fleet of English war vessels were going out on a 
cruise, sealed orders would be given by the Lords of 
the Admiralty to the Admiral or Captain, which, say, 
he was to open at Cadiz, in Spain. When he gets to 
Cadiz, he opens these orders ; there he Unds that he is 
to go to the East Indies. There he opens another 
packet, and he follows out the lines of direction that 
are given there, and so a succession of sealed orders di- 
rects him to go, wherever, in their wisdom, the Lords of 



16 SEALED ORDERS. 

the Admiralty wish him to go. In that way, great 
pieces of information and great plans are kept secret, 
even from those who are the most concerned in carry- 
ing them out. But this system has heen largely changed 
by the introduction and use of steam and the telegraph. 
A man can reach a ship, or the Secretary of the Navy, 
or the Lords of the Admiralty by telegraph. Trains 
and ships now come and go by schedule time. When 
a ship leaves Sandy Hook it is expected that in six 
days and five hours it will sight the light on Fastnet 
Rock — so accurately determined are the times, so nicely 
adjusted are the ways in which an ocean steamship 
goes — and even when a steamship is to go to far dis- 
tant ports, it may be reached by the ocean cable. 

As soon as an engineer of a locomotive comes into a 
station it is reported by the conductor just what time 
the train arrived and telegraphic orders are there as to 
what he shall do next. By telegraph, the train dis- 
patcher in the central office knows where each train is 
at each moment, and the whole movement is directed by 
one central will and thought. We are so accustomed 
to have our trains and ships directed thus, and to be 
punctual and prompt to the minute that there is anxiety 
if they do not arrive. What is the matter? at once we 
say. The ship is overdue by so many hours. " What 
has happened to it ? " Twenty-four hours pass away, 
and we ask, " What has broken upon it ? " After forty- 
eight hours we ask, " What about the people that are on 
it?" We know something has happened to a ship that 
does not come in punctual to its appointed time and 
almost to its appointed hour. 

In looking at the heavenly bodies that move punctual 
to their appointed second about their way, and know- 
ing all the laws that govern the minute things of life, 
the flowers that bloom and the birds that sing, the 
belief has come to some men that human life, if we 



SEALED ORDERS. 17 

could only understand its laws, could be reduced to a 
time schedule ; and the thoughts, acts and feelings of 
men might be mechanically guided and directed and 
thus brought under fixed laws to certain results. 

Some think that education and development of the 
human mind is simply a matter of scientific knowl- 
edge and scientific method, and therefore, education has 
come to be a science. It is looked upon as a science, 
under the name of Pedagogy. It rests on physiology 
and psychology and becomes then a question of method. 
It is claimed that you can develop a man very much as 
you can develop a flower, by ordering certain thoughts, 
and by bringing to bear certain motives. So again, 
religion is supposed to be a matter of scientific method. 
The creeds and dogmas with which we are familiar are 
simply the attempts to develop a human soul along a 
prescribed path and by a certain ascertained method. 
Souls are saved by a plan of salvation. That is the 
science of theology. 

Those of you who in early days read Marryat's nov- 
els, will remember the exceedingly entertaining novel, 
" Mr. Midshipman Easy," and you will also remember 
his father was a philosopher, with a method for reform- 
ing criminals. Criminals, he said, are so because of the 
shape of their heads. He had been reading Combe's 
Constitution of Man, and the new science of psychol- 
ogy had fascinated him. So he said there was a lack 
of benevolence which caused a man to commit murder. 
He said if a man could be put in a machine so that the 
wanting bump could be lifted up you could make that 
man a good, kind man. And so if the bump of ac- 
quisitiveness is over-developed all you have to do is to 
press upon this and develop the wanting faculty. Here, 
then, was. a simple and easy method of reform. These 
are but illustrations of the thoughts in our minds, that 
if we could only understand them, there are laws of 



18 SEALED ORDERS. 

human nature, of mind and soul, by which we could 
as easily reduce human nature, in all its powers of ac- 
tivity, to a science, as we can move ships and railroad 
trains punctual to their appointed minute. 

It is my belief that there is not quite as much faith 
in this as there used to be. Men have tried these 
schemes, a great many of them, and yet the desired 
result has not come. Sir Thomas More, in his Uto- 
pia, outlined many things which he believed would 
make the perfect state and perfect happiness ; and I 
think there is not one thing that Thomas More, a very 
wise man several hundred years ago, sketched out as 
being characteristic of the perfect state, that is not 
here to-day in full, complete operation. Yet we have 
not arrived at the perfect state and the happy man. So 
again, the philosophy of the plan of salvation has 
never worked as perfectly in dealing with men as it has 
on paper. And the sermons which I wrote very care- 
fully, and some of which I was reading the other day 
with a good deal of interest, worked out under that 
plan, have never had just that effect that the professor 
thought they would have when applied to a man. For 
a flesh and blood man or woman never could have 
fitted into those sermons. So they are used now as 
scrap books for .the children to paste in any pictures 
they may please to cut out, and I have reason to be- 
lieve they are very much more valuable as scrap books 
than as sermons. 

One does not hear so much of the science of education 
as he used to ; there are doubts as to whether what we 
call a human soul is so responsive to mechanical condi- 
tions that it may be brought up as a flower. And the 
political economy, which seemed so certain m the time 
of Jeremy Bentham and John Mill, has so utterly 
passed by that there are few now left to teach a politi- 
cal economy that seemed absolutely scientific and 



SEALED ORDERS. 19 

certain twenty years ago. For the human soul is not a 
machine ; it is not something that is mechanical or that 
is responsive to mechanical conditions. It has some- 
thing within it which we can not name, but which 
sweeps, pushes, impels and draws it by yet other laws 
than men have discovered. There are yet means of 
education which have not been discovered by any 
student of education. There is a salvation which 
somehow finds its way into a large and noble life with- 
out the knowledge of any plan of salvation. There is 
happiness, sweetness of life and prosperity, without 
making use of that old-time political economy. And 
there is reform, which is not mechanical. Let us say 
that there is no scheme, no plan, no science yet discov- 
ered which can adequately control and rule the human 
soul. 

This is suggested to me by this incident in the life of 
Jesus and of Peter. We will have to go back of this 
chapter in order to get its full significance. The disci- 
ples are walking along the way and are quarrelling 
among themselves as to who shall be greatest. One 
prefers his claim and another prefers his. This one 
will have the place of honor, and that one thinks he 
will have the place of trust. Jesus has heard them, but 
has given no sign ; but after supper, in this little upper 
room, he takes a basin of water and girds himself with 
a towel and begins to wash their feet. It is the work 
of a servant; it is what was known then and what 
would be known now as menial service — service that 
one does not willingly do for another except in the 
necessities of love. Peter, recognizing that it is not 
right, protests. "What do you do?" he says. And 
Jesus says, "What I do thou knowest not now, bat 
thou shalt know hereafter." Then Peter says, " Thou 
shalt never wash my feet ; I am not worthy." Jesus 
says, " If I wash thee not, thou hast no part in me," 



20 SEALED ORDERS. 

still talking enigmas. Then Peter, leaping to the other 
extreme, says: "Wash not my feet only, but also my 
hands and my head." " No," says Jesus ; " he who, 
before going out in the morning, has bathed himself, 
needs only that the soil that has gathered about his 
hands and feet from treading the way or handling 
things should be washed away." 

Jesus teaches that the greatness of life consists not in 
power and influence, but in service. He is greatest 
who can do most for other people ; who thinks most of 
their comfort and welfare, and losing sight of his own 
pleasure seeks to serve them. Greatness is measured, 
not by the power we wield, not by the influence we 
exert, not by the place we occupy, but by the helpful 
service that we do. Peter will learn this lesson, and 
when he learns it, all at once, from obscure incident and 
enigmatic words, there will shine forth a great light, 
and the experience of to-day will throw its light back 
upon the words of yesterday, and that which he knows 
not now, hereafter, when he himself comes to do life's 
work, he shall understand. 

Out of which comes this thought, the consciousness 
of the mystery there is about our lives. We can not 
understand why we have to do things. We do not un- 
derstand the experiences of to-day. Some imperious 
word says to us, Go forth. We go, as Abraham went, 
not knowing whither we go. Something says, Do this. 
We do it. If we ask the reason, the word within us 
says, What I do or command thou knowest not now. 
Thou shalt know hereafter. And all our lives go to 
throw light upon yesterday and the day before yester- 
day. Again and again we come up in life to some ex- 
perience out of which comes knowledge which makes 
clear the darkness of some past thing. What he does, 
the great Over Control, we do not know now ; but there 
is to us the promise, we shall know hereafter. 



SEALED ORDERS. 21 

Every soul is sent out from God as a ship upon a voy- 
age with sealed orders. We do not know where we are 
to go, our fathers and mothers can not tell. We can not 
ourselves foresee any experiences that await us. But 
each day, each hour, and each moment, somehow there 
is^ opened up before our consciousness some sealed 
orders. We go from this port to that ; from this day 
into to-morrow ; from this experience into that experi- 
ence by sealed orders. There is no time schedule for a 
human soul. You can not tell when it will arrive at 
any place and at any experience. You can not tell any- 
thing that awaits you, Life is a mystery, the meaning 
of which is kept with Grod ; and all we have is a suc- 
cession of sealed orders which experience is opening 
up for us every day, every hour, every moment of our 
lives. 

That is why I have taken as an illustration the sealed 
orders of the revenue cutter Russia. We have reduced 
our steamships on their ocean service to outlined paths 
and to appointed hours. We run the trains upon our 
railroads close to their schedule time; but a human 
soul can not and will not be run by any laws of politi- 
cal economy ; by any plan of salvation ; by any science 
of education ; or by any scheme of reform. The myste- 
ries of its laws, its comings, and its goings, are largely 
due to the impulsions of the great Over Control. Now, 
it has always been a belief with thoughtful nations and 
with thoughtful men and women, that there existed 
something in this world called by various names which 
controlled the thoughts and acts of men. Little chil- 
dren think they can do as they please. Foolish men 
and women think they can do as they please. But, by 
and by, to the most foolish man and woman, there comes 
the consciousness that what they please to do is largely 
what it pleases some other one that they shall do ; and 
that the limitations which are set upon the human will 



22 SEALED ORDERS. 

and caprice are such that we may only take between 
narrow walls, our own personal preference. 

It was called in the old days Fate ; and the Greek said 
the immense mind of Jove can not be transgressed. 
The Turk knew it and he said that the Destiny of Man 
was written upon an iron leaf which could not be 
broken. The Persian understood the same thing when 
he said: 

" On two days it steads not to flee from thy grave, 
The appointed and the unappointed day ; 
On the first, neither balm nor physician can save, 
Nor thee on the second the universe slay." 

Jesus, the Christ, understood it when he spoke of the 
Will of God which a man mast obey. Matthew Arnold 
Calls it the Stream of Tendency by which all things ful- 
fill the law of their being ; or, in yet another place, the 
Power not our own that makes — irresistibly — for Right- 
eousness. And it is recognized also in later phrase — 
the Reign of Law. Now, let any one call it what he will 
— fate, destiny, stream of tendency, power that makes 
for righteousness, will of God, reign of law — we mean 
always that there is a control that is exercised over 
human thought and human feeling which we must 
obey. 

Certain phases and expressions of this control come 
to us in what we call the laws of nature. We have 
found a few of them, and we know that we must obey 
them. We use a few of them in order to accomplish 
our results ; and in as far as we use them we are suc- 
cessful in life. But there still remains the large un- 
explored mystery that a man's soul is something di- 
rectly in touch with this great power and presence. 
This power is shaping and directing, by means of sealed 
orders, the individual life of every man and woman. 
There are some things which are not referred either to 



SEALED ORDERS. 23 

chance or to understood law; and such is the soul of 
man, It loves not according to law. It hates not ac- 
cording to law. He can not understand why he loves, 
or why he hates. Great gusts of passion sweep across a 
soul, and they can not he calculated hy any gage, spir- 
itual or other, to tell along what path they have swept 
or what next they will encounter. Life is inspirational 
and not mechanical. 

No man can tell just why it is he does a certain action. 
Lord Clive said to a man going out to be a Judge in 
India, " Do not try to explain why you have given a 
decision ; you do not know why you have decided thus ; 
your judgment is apt to he right, hut your reasons or 
your apparent reasons are apt to he wrong. You can 
not tell why you make up your mind." Now, we have 
sealed orders. There is given to us that which we open 
every day. Into the nature of a little child these things 
are put. No microscope can see them, no chemic test 
will discover them ; hut they open up as we come to 
this and come to that ; as we march our hour's march, 
our day's march, they are opened up before us and we 
read what we are to do next. We do not find these 
orders in a Bible or book of history or book of law, but 
we simply find written upon our spiritual consciousness, 
in letters that we can read : Go forth, Do this, Do that. 
If we stop to ask why, the word comes : " What I do, 
thou knowest not now ; thou shalt know hereafter." 

Is there one of you who is here to-day who can not 
remember that your life has been a continual surprise to 
yourself? Do you not realize that little monitions of 
the unseen, propulsions as of the pressure of an invisi- 
ble finger, beckonings as of a hand, welcomings as of 
a voice — something has been drawing you on or push- 
ing you on, out of yesterday into to-day, out of this ex- 
perience into that, until you say, " My life is to me 
more of a surprise, in its erraticisms and eccentricities, 



24 SEALED ORDERS. 

in its strange incongruities, than it could be to any one 
else." I have gone up a mountain and reached the 
place where I expected to arrive, but the way there — 
oh, through what strange paths I have gone ! — going 
down where I thought I ought to go up, going to the 
right where I thought I ought to go directly ahead, and 
yet by and by, from the top looking down, marking 
this way now seen clearly, I have known each step was 
an onward one. So we look back over life. 

Who is the man that dares say his mistakes have not 
helped him ? That his very sins have not been his mes- 
sengers of light? We would not dare say to do this 
wrong thing ; but yet it is by this wrong thing that we 
did that we learned to distinguish the right thing ; by the 
fall made that we reached forward to the higher thing ; 
by the slipping of a foot that we clutched something 
that we would not otherwise have caught hold of. 
Life is sealed orders from the time of birth until death. 
We can not tell where we go. All we know is that a 
great controlling mind knows where we are going; 
knows every wind that blows across us ; knows all the 
things that shall happen to us ; has calculated the re- 
sistance, and knows that we shall arrive at last at that 
port to which we are bound. 

Now, we study life in little bits, and we see this and 
we see that, and we measure ourselves and each other 
by it. That is not a fair standard. Burns put in that 
plea when he said about the " Unco' Guid : " 

" What's done we partly may compute, 
But know not what's resisted.' ' 

A man is measured by the attempts he makes to rise. 
If he falls ninety-nine times, God does not care for the 
number of times he fell ; he tried to stand upon his feet 
again. It is not mistakes and errors and sins that 
count, but it is the endeavor to rectify mistakes and to 



SEALED ORDERS. 25 

correct the path of life, and to be rid of the sin which 
did so easily beset us. 

The paths across the ocean are now laid plain ; the 
charts mark out each rock and shoal ; but for all that 
the man who is charged with the responsibility of a 
thousand lives, consults his chart and takes his bear- 
ings, just so many times each day, waits until the clouds 
move so that he can get a glimpse of the sun, moon or 
star, and then makes his calculation as to where he is. 
And a man who is to live an inspirational life and to 
rectify his life continually, is a man who takes his bear- 
ings as he goes along. 

There are two things God gives us, by which we may 
direct our path. One is history, which is the record 
of human variation and human achievement. History 
tells a nation what it has accomplished and up what 
path it has come. It tells us by what paths we have 
arrived at the achievements of to-day. We read his- 
tory to know our path, the trend and direction of it. 
Then we have that within us, the unseen light, by 
means of which we tell where we are. If I want to 
know God's word, I do not open a book, whether it 
is a Bible or a dictionary, to know it. I look down 
into my conscience. It is the living record of God, 
and I open some sealed order which I find there, and 
it tells me what to do next. A Bible is a record of hu- 
man experience and therefore valuable. A statute book 
is a book of human experience in the endeavor to make 
laws. Customs, habits and human opinion are the rec- 
ord of experience, and we study them up to a certain 
point. But each one is made responsible to himself, 
and the whole history of his life but throws light upon 
to-day and helps him to read these letters, somewhat 
hieroglyphic and mystical, in which these sealed orders 
are written. 



26 SEALED ORDERS. 

And yet one other thing helps us, and that is what 
we call justice. Justice is that by which we test the 
truth of the inner word. ~No word can be true that is 
not good in its results, when applied to the actions of 
men. There is not a single thought that ever came 
from the Infinite Mind that was not meant to help us 
to do our duty in life to-day or to-morrow ; to adjust 
ourselves in our relations to our fellowmen. There- 
fore a man must always ask this question, What is the 
effect of my thought and my act upon my fellowman? 
If it presses him down, hinders his development, hurts 
him in any way, that man has not got the truth, no 
matter what the source. Though a thousand churches 
for a thousand ages should affirm it, it would not be 
God's truth ; for God's truth shows always how a man 
may live in happy, helpful relations with his fellowman. 
Justice is the golden rule. 

No husband can live in a family and have his own 
way. He must always ask, How does that affect my 
wife? How does it affect my children? From the 
very moment that he takes upon himself the marriage 
vow, by so much he has limited himself. Justice in 
the family says, of every cent of expenditure, of every 
simple act, what is the effect here ? And we study our 
liberty by the rights of another. So it is in friendship. 
So it is in political relationships. We judge of a soci- 
ety by the condition of the lowest man that is there. 
If there is one little child under the wheel of a railroad 
car, then that must stop. If there is one little life that is 
being hindered in its development by our ideas of econ- 
omy, by our commercial ideas, if there is one anywhere 
that is not getting his rights, then we must adjust it. 

We have not got all the truth yet. In partnerships 
of business we see the same thing. No man stands 
alone. His partner is an equal partner with himself. 
Every man must ask, wherever he is, Does the light 



SEALED ORDERS. 27 

that shines upon me and the thing that seems right to 
me in any way interfere with my neighbor, my friend, 
my wife, my child, my partner, anybody else in the 
world? He. must be sensitive to this. It is a very del- 
icate instrument; like that across which the surveyor 
draws the spider web in order to get his line. It is a 
chemical test, more fine than any chemist has yet been 
able to discover; the sense of justice in a man. 

It is light coming down from God and revealing his 
will, but often misinterpreted by us. We can not read 
God's handwriting, and we say, this seems to me the 
right thing to do, what I ought to do. This is my plan, 
my thought, my wish, I will do this. But, my friend, 
that revelation may not be of God. You can not tell 
how it is until you test it by the delicate instrument of 
justice. How will this thing I do affect my wife and 
her interest, my child, my neighbor, my partner, my 
friend ? When the truth that comes to you helps also 
this one that is next to you, then be sure the seal of 
God is on it. That is what I call sealed orders ; the 
inspirational character and quality of life. Schemes of 
education, good as they are, are but the coarse media 
by which we lead a soul, to be continually readjusted 
and studied out in practical life. The ideas of political 
economy and commerce to-day are continually chang- 
ing because they are studied in the interests of the in- 
dividual man; and the ideas of religion are being 
brought to the test of men everywhere — how does it 
affect them ? 

And now, of our own life ; it is no varying wander- 
ing as of a chance-blown seed. God knows the path 
we take and we do but follow a spiritual impulsion. 
The experiences of life we can not miss. There we 
bend over a grave, but by and by we do not know 
whether we dare wish it had been otherwise ; there the 
shadow of darkness of a great wrong done, but we 



28 SEALED ORDERS. 

pass through, that, and here it is sunlight ; here the 
winds hlow and the tempests howl, there it is fair sail- 
ing — all these are the different experiences we come 
through in this much variegated world of God's. But 
the question is not what experiences you have had, but 
what use you have made of them ; whether you have 
read them aright and learned wisdom by the things 
that you have suffered, whether you went on and on, 
still trying to find God's star which was your one guide, 
still trying to read aright the sealed order which was 
continually being opened up to you, still testing your 
course to-day by your sense of justice, the effect it has 
upon your neighbor. 



THE MISSION OF THE SON OF MAN. 



We come to Thee, God, our Father in Heaven, thank- 
ful for another day of rest, asking Thee that in the 
quiet and stillness may come that needed rest, not only 
of the body, but also of the mind, much troubled and 
preplexed with the questions it has to solve and the 
burdens it has to carry. Thou canst meet every one at 
the threshold with a welcome ; Thou canst give comfort 
to all that sorrow, joy to all that mourn, and patience 
to all that must needs carry burdens. Oh God, give a 
glad welcome to the little children, as he who said, 
" Suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them 
not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven." Be with 
them all to-day. And be with all young men, who 
come with questions on their lips, as he who came to 
Jesus saying, " What shall I do to inherit eternal life ?" 
Be with all troubled, anxious, and burdened souls. Be 
with those who come in the gladness and fullness of 
their strength. Help us to throw off all our burdens ; 
and let songs come to our lips to take the place of sad- 
ness; and strength to take the place of weakness. 
Give us all our daily bread, our daily sufficiency of 
light and hope and strength, through Jesus Christ, our 
Lord. 



THE MISSION OF THE SON OF MAN. 



1 ' For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world ; 
but that the world through him might be saved." 

John iii, 17. 

5) VERY person has what we may call dominant 
ideas, and these express themselves in character- 
istic words. The words of Jesus Christ which at 
once come into the mind — those that are peculiar to 
him and characteristic of him, great distinctive words 
—are " life," « love," " save," and " world." 

To " life " he gave a new meaning. Life was not 
merely existence, but life was joyful or eternal exist- 
ence, existence without end. Eternal life he gave, that 
is, joyful life, the life of a soul interpenetrated hy the 
joy of God; a life that death has no more effect upon 
than acid has upon perfectly pure gold. 

By " love," he meant not merely a sentiment, but a 
great natural social force; love that hound heart to 
heart ; love that makes the family one ; love that begets 
friendship and binds individuals into a nation ; love 
that binds a soul to G-od and to its neighbor ; the pas- 
sionate force that holds the atoms of the social organ- 
ism together. 

Another word is " save," "salvation." It is equiva- 
lent to the word " health " when used of physical things. 
Of the body, we say it is in a state of health or in a 
state of salvation. The words are equivalent. Of the 
soul, we say it is in a state of salvation, that is, the 



32 THE MISSION OF THE SON OF MAN. 

death principle is not working there ; no insidious 
principle of evil is there; the soul is full of truth and 
love and justice; is sound, is whole; and in the older 
forms of the word, the words " hale," and " whole," and 
" holy," all meant the same thing. 

So this word " world " used to-day, is a characteristic 
word. It is a word descriptive of the great idea that 
was in his mind. I shall put it in contrast a little later 
in the progress of this thought with the idea of individ- 
ualism. The word " world " is equivalent in Christ's 
thought, with the word " whole," the whole of human- 
ity. We look upon the great world round about us, 
and say there are twelve hundred million human 
beings now living. These are individuals ; each is dis- 
tinct in himself; each is personal, peculiar. The mass 
may be broken up into these social atoms. 

And yet we know that these individuals that make 
up a world, are not like grains of sand ; that they are 
as parts of a great organism ; for, as we look at them 
closely, we see first, that the individuals begin to group 
into families — father, mother, children. And then we 
have families as units. The family is distinct from the 
individual ; it is made up of the individuals, and yet 
the individuals are related to the family. They have 
different duties, different obligations, different func- 
tions. So the family is a social unit and a social whole. 
Then these families group together and make tribes 
and nations. A nation is simply a large number of 
families. There is the same blood, they bear in mem- 
ory certain great ancestors ; they hold dear certain 
memories or traditions, and look forward hopefully to 
certain results. They are circumscribed by rivers, 
mountains or seas ; and within that space they have 
grown up to have a unique life. So we are dealing 
now with another social unit called a nation, composed 
of tribes ; the tribes composed of family units. We 



THE MISSION OF THE SON OF MAN. 33 

find that the nation has in itself certain national char- 
acteristics; a dialect or language, and customs peculiar 
to it. The national unit then, or the national whole, 
is made by the grouping of this vast number of human 
atoms. You can draw a nation up out of the mass of 
humanity and study it as a whole and predicate of it 
certain actions. It has written a characteristic sign 
upon the page of history, and has contributed certain 
characteristic things to civilization. It has a peculiar 
poetry — a folk-lore ; it has given some one name to the 
constellation of great men. But the nation is only a 
part and not all. 

"We can not divide humanity into nations and study 
them separately. "When we speak of the European na- 
tions, we know there is the German, Austrian, Italian, 
English, French, Scandinavian, Russian — each distinct- 
ively individual, and yet forming another larger social 
whole ; and so we speak of the European nations and 
European civilization. There we have certain larger 
characteristics that distinguish them from the African 
and the Asian, from the Oceanican and the North and 
South American. We are dealing with a peculiar mass 
of people who have certain ideas and interests in com- 
mon, which lead us to call them the European nations. 

Then we may pass beyond these limits of geography, 
and say the races are to be looked upon as social wholes 
or units. There are certain characteristics of the Afri- 
can, of the Mongol, of the Indian, of the Caucasian, 
of the Malay races — certain things that mark them as 
distinct. A portion of the hair will enable the ethnol- 
ogist to tell to just what great division or race a man 
belongs. 

Then there is a larger whole which we call the world. 
It has certain common ideas, common hopes, common 
characteristics. The blood is red in the whole of it, 
and the great passion for justice, pity, and love, are 



34 THE MISSION OF THE SON OF MAN. 

common now to the world — to the human world as 
distinguished from the brute world. There, then, stands 
the great whole, the human world. We see how far we 
have gone from looking upon all these twelve hundred 
millions as individuals, in separating them in their 
interests, hopes, memories and characteristics from 
others. We know very well we can not take up one of 
them and hold him out and study him. Organic fila- 
ments, as Carlyle would say, have spun themselv.es out 
from him to almost every other person in the world ; 
and when we try to draw one up alone, it is like draw- 
ing up a lot of magnetized nails — we draw them all 
up together when trying to draw up one. Or like draw- 
ing up a flower — we draw up its roots with it. 

So one man is related, in certain ways more or less 
plain, to every man. Now that is the idea of the whole, 
or the world. Let us put it in homely contrast with 
the old spirit when a man could pray, " God bless me 
and my wife, my son John and his wife, us four and no 
more." That is individualism or the family unit. That 
man's ideas have not expanded to take in any one be- 
yond " us four and no more." What a narrow soul is 
that, we say. Its sympathies do not go out. It cares 
for nothing more than the " four and no more." 

The way in which the world is being taken up into 
human thought, as a great whole, may perhaps be illus- 
trated in this way : A man has invented a machine ; it 
represents a new idea and he believes it capable of doing 
great work. Before he takes out a patent in this 
country he prepares to take out a patent in every Euro- 
pean country too. He is not satisfied simply to have 
control of it in the United States ; he wants to possess 
the world with it ; he wants to control the earth, so far 
as that machine is concerned. The telephone patents 
are not only for America, but for Europe and perhaps 



THE MISSION OF THE SON OF MAN. 35 

for Asia. The unity of the world as a great whole has 
entered into the mind of the last generation. 

When a man has a great song, he wants every one 
to hear it. Mrs. Stowe's " Uncle Tom's Cabin " has 
been translated into almost every language; so have 
the sermons of Beecher; so have other books. It is 
not long after a man has written a book until some one 
in Italy has questioned whether it is not best to put 
that upon the list of forbidden books — the books that 
may not be read by the children of the church That 
is, the influence of au idea is not confined to the limits 
of a State or a Country, but is influencing the world. 
So we see how the world is a great whole — a great 
whole with its parts knitted together, and is under the 
influence of any great pervasive thought and any in- 
spiring idea. 

This illustrates to us the place of the word "world" 
in the mind of Jesus Christ. You remember how often 
he said the field was not simply that little area of Pales- 
tine— "The field is the world;" "Go ye into all the 
world and preach the gospel to every creature ; " " The 
field is the world," — that is, the great whole. " God so 
loved the world" — every one in it, not simply the Jew, 
but every one in the world — "that he sent his only be- 
gotten Son." Just as the father loves the whole family, 
not any one, but all, and thinks of them as a family. 
In each one he loves something distinctive, some pecu- 
liar grace of sweetness or usefulness, but the family as 
a whole. 

" God sent not his Son into the world to condemn 
the world; but that the world through him might be 
saved." That is, it was an expectation of the salvation 
of the whole world that was present with him. It was 
not to draw a few persons from destruction, from evil 
and from possible pain, just as we would run into a 
building and draw out a few of those who might be in 



36 THE MISSION OF THE SON OF MAN. 

danger of the loss of their lives ; but it was to save a 
world and all that were in it. That was the conception 
he had of his mission. " God sent not his Son into 
the world to condemn the world, but that the world 
through him might be saved." How that word in its 
meaning begins to orb itself out until it comprehends 
every man and woman and child, black and white, 
heathen, Christian, Mohammedan and Jew, all of them 
some time to be taken up into the infinite love of God 
and into the conception of his mission which Jesus 
Christ had. I want vou to realize the meaning of that 
word world. Weigh it in your hand for a moment — 
the whole of humanity ; feel the weight of it upon your 
heart just for a second, that you may know how the 
burden pressed upon the spirit of Jesus Christ as he 
realized that he had been sent to save a world. 

In this connection let us attempt to realize what con- 
ception of his mission the Son of Man had. While 
he was sent to this individual and that, to bring 
Mary of Magdala back from her life of sin, to recall 
Peter from his denial of his Master, and to bring Mat- 
thew and Zaccheus back into usefulness, yet his mission 
was not alone to individuals. It was to so infuse them 
with his large idea that every one of them being re- 
stored to health, should become a center of force and 
influence by means of which a world might be saved. 
God hath sent his Son into the world, he says, not to 
condemn the world, but to save the world. 

Now men are condemned enough. Every man knows 
it. I remember when one had been asked by Mr. 
Brockway, the head of the Elmira Reformatory, to speak 
one Sunday morning to the prisoners, he warned him 
thus : " You can speak on any subject here but the word 
hell. They know all about that now, a good deal better 
than you do. You are to speak on salvation and love 
and heaven. They know more about hell now than any 



THE MISSION OF THE SON OF MAN. 37 

one else." Now, Jesus says, I have not come to con- 
demn the world. Every man is condemned already, 
and knows it. The remorse, the despair, the sense of 
pain, the feeling that you are out of relation, all these 
things we know perfectly well ; we do not need anybody 
to tell us that we are out of relation, we feel the 
pain of it. And Christ did not come to tell them such 
things as that, which men already knew, but to tell 
them how to get out of that condition ; how to save 
the world from that ; how to possess themselves of the 
forces and centers of influence in the world, that others 
might not fall into like trouble. Christ came to im- 
press upon men the hope of salvation, and open up to 
them the ways of life ; to infuse them with enthusiasm 
of humanity so that they themselves would go out as 
missionaries of the new faith. That was his mission, 
the salvation of the world. It was nothing less than 
that which Jesus Christ had as his conception of his 
mission. 

Now, to save a world was to take possession of these 
great centers of influence. If you are going to start a 
reform, the place to start it is in the city, where there 
are newspapers that can talk about it ; where there are 
intelligent men to grasp it ; where there are social forces 
that can organize it and carry it out. The cities are 
centers of might and life and organization. To possess 
oneself of a city, then, is to influence a large outlying 
country. Jesus knew what we know now, that people 
fall in masses. You can vitiate the atmosphere of this 
room so that every one of you will be lethargic and 
languid. It is not enough for some one to come in 
from the outside and say : " You are sick and dying," 
and take out one at a time. Long before this congre- 
gation could be gotten out of doors in that way, some 
would be dead. The way to do is to open the windows 
and let in the air. People fall in masses, then, because 



38 THE MISSION OF THE SON OF MAN. 

there is sickness at the heart of men ; because there is 
a poison around them; because a false idea has misled 
them; because the objects of their life are low. 

Take for instance intemperance. There are those who 
think that people are intemperate because of taste for 
drink. I do not think so. But having that conception 
they take this man out and that man out. E"ow we see 
that the causes of intemperance are other than the in- 
dividual will. They are many. They are in poverty — 
and I believe the greatest cause of intemperance is pov- 
erty, absolute misery of life ; and in this indulgence 
they have a sense of forgetting it ; it is in the weakness 
of the body ; they need strength, and resort to drink for 
this false strength. More than that, a starved and de- 
generated physical organism craves something. We 
know that what might be called the object of the new 
temperance movement is not to take one and another 
up, but to control the causes, get possession of the cen- 
ters of influence. 

We feel now that the cause of crime is not alone in 
an individual will, is not in a depraved heart; but 
crime may come from a large number of sources. It 
may come from a false sentiment in the community ; it 
may come from poverty ; it may come from bad asso- 
ciations and evil communications. So we must possess 
the large central forces in the world, and sweep honesty, 
truth, heroism and love through it before we shall have 
succeeded in reaching all this crime. 

Jesus, in his conception of his mission, had just such 
large ideas as that. He had infinite time and leisure to 
attend to the individual ; he would go down to Jericho 
to restore a little twelve-year-old girl to life. He would 
stop at any time to listen to the wailing cry of a child 
or a lost woman ; and yet for all that, he knew it was 
impossible to take them one by one and drag them out 
of the hell they were in ; and that certain large forces 



THE MISSION OF THE SON OF MAN. 39 

must be liberated, and certain large ideas must possess 
the world before it could be saved. The secret of the 
liberation of an individual soul from the bondage of sin 
is not cutting off its habit. Its habit is only the ex- 
pression of its sin. But it is taking possession of its 
heart with a new force ; of its mind with a new idea. 

Let me fill the mind of a young man with an idea, 
and his heart with a passion, and I know very soon the 
whole life will be regulated, will build itself up. Jesus 
gave great ideas to the world, expansive, forceful ideas. 
Some of them are so old now that we can not realize 
that they were ever new ; but when he gave the idea of 
the Fatherhood of God, at once that made of the whole 
world a family ; at once every one thought, Why, I 
know what fatherhood means ; that means wise, tender 
government ; that means thoughtful provision ; that 
means protection ; that means forgiveness ; that means 
exhaustless love. Get that thought into the mind of 
every man and at once heaven has become a great fam- 
ily centered about the great benignant Heart that never 
knew anything but to love. 

Another idea he gave was that of brotherhood. Now 
brotherhood, if we can take the cant away from the 
word and take it out of the mouth of the demagogue, 
and just stand it there as a great scientific term, means 
just this, that the same way in which we treat each other 
in the family, all the members of the world are to treat 
each other. That is all there is of it. It is a simple 
thing. You see the world does not believe it possible. 
Why, they say, of course I know what I am to do to 
my brother and sister ; but then it is ridiculous to say 
that I must treat outside people in the same way, 
No, my friends, it is a Christian conception. Let us try 
it ; to be solicitous for each other's welfare ; to comfort 
each other in sorrow ; provide for each other in want. 



40 THE MISSION OF THE SON OF MAN. 

The members of such a family should be so bound to- 
gether, so happy in their lives, so ardent in their affec- 
tions, so able to withstand outside pressure, and so 
strong to accomplish certain desired results that others 
will see that in the union of the brotherhood there is 
the greatest social strength. 

Now those are two ideas that he gave to the world. 
What expansive power there is in them. Jesus Christ, 
then, thought that the world was to be saved as well as 
the individuals in it. 

There is great attraction in masses for each other. 
The earth attracts the moon directly in proportion to 
the mass. If it is one hundred times as large as the 
moon, other things being equal, it will attract it one 
hundred times as much. So the sun attracts the earth. 
Now great ideas have that attractive power in that they 
draw us toward themselves; and such an idea is the 
word which Jesus Christ put before his disciples. 
Nothing less than a world must ever satisfy you; 
nothing less than every individual in it must satisfy 
you. This idea has always had in it an attractive 
power over human souls, and enlarges the soul to the 
measure of the idea. The man who says, " I am con- 
tent if I can save my soul in this life," would have a 
soul little worth saving at the end of it ! But the man 
who says, "I can never be happy if I live a thousand 
times a thousand lives if a single soul were in pain or 
misery in this vast universe of God," and means it as he 
says it, that man's soul rounds itself out until it is as 
large as the universe of God. Nothing less than every 
individual in this world would satisfy the immense love 
of Jesus Christ. That was his conception of it. 

But ideas always take a certain form ; they are clothed 
with flesh, and this idea was to build itself up into a world 
within the world, a society within society, the Kingdom 
of God. Very many persons think the Kingdom of 



THE MISSION OF THE SON OF MAN. 41 

God is something the other side of death. The King- 
dom of God simply meant, with Jesus Christ, human 
society purified of all its evil, the parts of it inspired 
by great religious ideas and bound together by the ties 
of brotherhood. That is, if I could conceive that all 
the members of this congregation had adopted abso- 
lutely the ideas of Jesus Christ and were living in the 
instant thought of God as their Father; were living 
according to his laws, physical, mental and spiritual, 
and were living in their relation to each other as the 
members of many families do, Jesus Christ would say, 
then, the Kingdom of God that I wished and dreamed 
of and spoke of is here to-day — right here and now. 

The future thought of it is simply the expansion of it 
to include more and more, until at last it is coterminous 
with the limits of the universe itself. " The Kingdom 
of God," says Paul, " is righteousness and peace and joy 
in the Holy Ghost." Now, where there is any anger 
there is no Kingdom of God; where there is injustice 
the Kingdom of God has not come ; where there is 
antagonism in society the Kingdom of God is not there ; 
where the Kingdom of God is, there is righteousness in 
act and joy in life, a peaceful relation between the 
members of that society. The Kingdom of God, then, 
is no vision or dream ; but when a man says, " I will 
live as God wants a man to live, and I will treat every 
man as if he were my brother and share my goods with 
him, and comfort him, and take comfort from him," 
there the Kingdom of God is on earth as it was meant 
to be. Sometimes it is called the Church ; the Church 
is simply a realization of the Kingdom of God — a little 
realization of it. The Church is a family. Whether 
the term Kingdom of God or Church is used, it is all 
the same thing, it is the ecclesia. 

Such a conception as this must determine the idea of 
this Church in its relation to the world. Nothing less 



42 THE MISSION OF THE SON OF MAN. 

than a world could satisfy it, If there were one of 
you here who thought you could be happy in another 
world if there were a single person left in the depths 
of the nethermost hell, I should be sorry for you. You 
have not penetrated to the thought of Jesus Christ, yet. 
You must possess trie world with your love and hope. 
You must believe that the infinite love of God and the 
persistent love of man will yet reach into the bottom 
of every social hell on earth, and every hell that may 
be in any other part of the universe, and empty it. 

So I read the mind of God and so I preach. I believe 
the love of God will yet recall every one and make him 
happy somewhere in this universe, and nothing less 
than that satisfies my conception of the love of God. 
So I work, and expect to work, and when the seventy 
years of my life here are through, I ask for no harp 
and no crown so long as there is any social hell on any 
planet, where I can carry such experience as I have had 
here. We must have Christian influences and laws ; 
we must show ideas through the laws ; we must com- 
pel men to come in. A woman once said : " You have 
made it so that no one can eat a Thanksgiving dinner 
in peace if there is any one who has not been provided 
for," and I was thankful that my words had reached so 
far. Never be content while another is unhappy. 
Never be happy while another is miserable. Let these 
ideas enter into the minds of all men, until at last men 
shall not fall, but shall be raised up. 

When a community has great possessing ideas, that 
lifts every one that is in it. If this town should be 
filled with a great passion for justice, it would shame 
every one who is unjust. It would compel every one 
to accept the grand passion of the town in the direc- 
tion of justice. Preventive medicine now takes this 
line. It does not simply seek to cure one person of 
small-pox, but vaccinates a community, so that no one 



THE MISSION OF THE SON OF MAN. 43 

need die of small-pox. It does not now simply seek 
to take one little child out of the poisonous breath, of 
diphtheria or scarlet fever, but through sanitary and 
hygienic measures, it possesses the world for health. 
We may not seek a scheme of salvation from hell for 
an individual soul, but a great preventive thought to 
keep men from falling; and a great restorative mea- 
sure to bring masses back, so that, as in the Adam or 
in the natural fleshly man, all died; in the Christ — 
equally true — all must be made alive. 

This, then, is the thought which I have as to the 
mission of the Son of Man. It is on this thought that 
this Church has been builded, and every sermon has 
been preached. It will be the constant, insistent thought 
which I shall present. Nothing less than a whole world 
to be brought within the kingdom of God ; and it is 
the duty of every individual as soon as he has entered 
into the light to become a missionary of the new faith 
of preventive Christianity ; formative Christianity rather 
than reformatory; preventive rather than remedial. 
So, that when we touch the individual, it shall be help- 
ful to all. 

If it be in the power of a word of mine to lift you 
up at all, it would not be to have you only enjoy life, 
but to make you strong and active that the comfort 
wherewith you have been comforted of God, might 
also be the possession of sorrowful souls. 



THE DISCONTENT OF THE FORTUNATE. 




THE DISCONTENT OF THE FORTUNATE. 

' And the young man saith unto Jesus, What lack I yet f ' ' 
Matthew xix, 20. 

Y subject this morning is social discontent. 
Not as that word is so frequently used, the 
discontent of the poor, or of the working 
people ; but rather another form of social discontent to 
which I give the name, The Discontent of the Fortunate. 
It may seem to ns at first a strange use of words to 
couple discontent with good fortune ; and yet we gen- 
erally find, I think, that underneath all the good fortune 
of this world there is working all the while a discontent ; 
and not simply the dissatisfaction which every one feels, 
which all must feel because we have not yet attained 
the perfect. Every one is dissatisfied who is living. 
All must be dissatisfied who will grow. But the dis- 
content of the fortunate is something more than this. 
It is the cry of the social sentiment. 

The young man in the gospel who came running to 
Jesus by the way and fell down before him, worship- 
ping him, is the type of the discontent of the fortunate. 
He had all, seemingly. He had youth with all its fresh- 
ness and receptivity, hope and expectation ; he had 
health, too, and he had great wealth. His cattle were 
feeding upon the grassy meadows of Edom in sight, and 
his noble house, for he was what might be called a Duke 



48 THE DISCONTENT OF THE FORTUNATE. 

of Eclom, was to be seen crowning the beautiful hill over- 
looking the lake of Galilee. He must have had friends, be- 
cause wealth, when it is connected with health and youth, 
always brings friends. He had more than that — charac- 
ter ; for he could say what few have said, that he had 
kept the laws of righteousness from his youth up. His 
lips had been sullied by no lie ; he was pure in heart ; 
he had honored his father and mother ; and, as he 
thought, he had loved his neighbor as himself. At any 
rate there was an attractive personality ; and so, in ad- 
dition to youth and health and wealth he had character. 
He had, too, a certain pleasing manner, a grace of per- 
son which makes what we call charm — attractiveness, 
because, looking upon him, Jesus loved him. We all 
know there are those whose beaut} 7 of face, whose 
grace of manner, whose sweetness of word, whose hu- 
mility of demeanor attract us toward them. We call 
their manner grace or charm. And so we have here 
what would seem to satisfy any one ; and if there is 
anything which could make any one happy it would 
seem to be youth, health, wealth, friends, character and 
grace of life and manner. 

And yet what a pathetic cry this young man puts 
up : I want life ; I want eternal life — not existence 
prolonged a hundred years or a hundred and fifty. It 
was not the fear of death that was before him ; it was 
rather that the cup of life which he lifted to drink was 
like stale, warm water. It did not satisfy him. It was 
as if the food that he ate was not seasoned to his taste 
and was insipid. Something was lacking that should 
give a quality to his life, not prolongation of years, but 
quality of existence. 

And what a pathetic cry this is, " What lack I yet?" 
And if we had heard him we might have said : Why, 
young friend of ours, what can you lack? You have 



THE DISCONTENT OF THE FORTUNATE. 49 

life and you have youth, and there is not a single bur- 
den, it would seem, resting upon your spirit ; you can 
sleep at night, and there is no aching head; you have 
not the burden of care with regard to support ; you 
have friends, you have wealth, and you have all that 
wealth can buy. And you have character — no regrets, 
no remorse eating into your soul. And you have 
charm, so that every one who looks at you loves you. 
What can you lack? But still he puts up his cry, 
" What lack I yet ? " And we seem to hear him repeat 
it wherever he goes — What lack I yet ? And as I hear 
it, it seems to me like the starling that Sterne heard in 
Paris, which had been brought from England, crying 
in its gilded cage, "I can't get out! I can't get out!" 
and that was all its cry. Up and down the little Paris 
street it sounded, greeting him who came, and sending 
its word after him who passed, " I can't get out ! " 

So this fortunate young man kept saying, " I lack, I 
lack! What lack I yet?" What did he lack? Can 
you tell me what it was that was wanting to make him a 
na PPJ man • Jesus knew what he lacked, and said to 
him, " Go sell what thou hast and give to the poor, and 
come and follow me, and thou shalt have life." Now, 
what was this lack ? Evidently what Jesus was telling 
him was the thing Jesus thought he lacked. It was 
not that he should give to the poor. It was not that 
he should sell what he had and become poor. It was 
not that. It was a lack of touch with his fellow men. 
He lacked the exercise of sympathy with suffering; he 
lacked the eye that was wet with pity for want ; he 
lacked the common experiences of fellowship with hu- 
manity; he lacked the knowledge of his fellow men; 
he lacked the touch of hand with hand in friendship, 
which wealth could not buy ; he lacked human fellow- 
ship. That is what he lacked — the touch of the heart 
to the human heart. For we are born for each other, 

4 



50 THE DISCONTENT OF THE FORTUNATE. 

and not each one for himself; born to clasp hands in 
united effort ; born to join voices in some great shout of 
triumph, in some deep amen; born to struggle to- 
gether, suffer defeat together; born to conquer to- 
gether ; born to be together and not separate. Here in 
all his splendor of life this young man was isolated, 
shut up within himself. His castle was a prison, a 
gilded cage, but a cage. He was starving to death for 
social sympathy. 

He lacked the touch of heart to heart — the claims of 
the social sentiment. He never knew what it was to 
meet a man as true men may meet. Men who met 
him paid deference to his wealth and place and power. 
And so he was starving for human sympathy and 
human fellowship. His was the home-sickness of 
humanity which is shut in from touch and sympathy 
with other men. And now Jesus says, " These are 
chains about you. If you want to be free, break them.' , 
You are starving to death. It is not enough to have 
simply that which the eye sees. If you are blind you 
are starving for that which comes through the eye. If 
you are deaf, you are hungering and starving for melody. 
If you are rich and have not friendship, you are starving 
through loneliness. A man may suffer want in diverse 
ways, and not alone through want of food. This man 
was starving to death, with youth, friendship, health, 
wealth, charm of grace and manner, and comfortable 
surroundings ; he was starving to death for want of the 
common experiences that come to us through touching 
our fellow men. 

That is what I mean, then, by the discontent of the 
fortunate— the craving for human society, the hunger- 
ing for sympathy; the demand within ourselves that 
we meet on common planes of life, so that man may 
meet man, hand clasp hand, voices join, tears now 



THE DISCONTENT OF THE FORTUNATE. 51 

together in the midst of a common wealth and a com- 
mon want of humanity. 

There are many stories which illustrate this, strange 
and pathetic. Those of us who were "brought up on 
the Arabian Nights will remember some. I have great 
sympathy with the boys and girls who have not been 
brought up upon the Arabian Nights. You can not 
read it when you are old. Its charm is gone. Haroun 
Al Raschid, every night muffling himself in common 
garments and dropping the insignia of wealth and posi- 
tion, as Caliph, loved to go and listen among the people, 
hear them chatter of their common daily life, and then 
he sought to right the wrongs and equalize the inequal- 
ities of which he heard. It was the longing of a Caliph 
to be a man ; the longing of the fortunate, who is re- 
moved by his good fortune from common humanity, to 
be a man again. 

The story of the king and the beggar is another illus- 
tration of this. The beggar, in splendid health, is sing- 
ing his careless song ; he is heard by the king one day, 
and as he listens, he finds a fresh note in this song, 
such as he has not heard elsewhere. No hired singers 
can give it. He looks at the beggar as he eats his crust 
of bread and says, " What a magnificent appetite ! " 
He passes him as he is asleep with his cloak over his 
face, the happy, untroubled, dreamless sleep of want 
of care. Then the king sends for him, and they talk a 
long while. And then in the night, slowly the palace 
door opens, while the guards are asleep, and two men, 
king and beggar, hand in hand, come out from the palace 
and together they set out to live the life of common 
men, and share the joy that belongs to us all. They 
were never found again. They were sought far and 
wide, but the king had hidden himself, and having 
tasted the joy of common life, he never would go back 
again to be a king. 



52 THE DISCONTENT OF THE FORTUNATE. 

This is the discontent of the fortunate. There is the 
possibility in the nature of every one of us of with- 
drawing from the common experiences, hopes, memories 
and traditions of life, so that we are shut up, as it were, 
in a palace, and yet starving to death ; seated at a table 
that groans with food and finding nothing to eat; 
having drinks of every variety, but not being able to 
quench our thirst ; plenty of friends, yet no friendship ; 
want in the midst of plenty. This is the discontent of 
the fortunate. 

The splendid achievements of this nineteenth century 
are in our minds, and need no recounting. The man of 
1788 could not have dreamed, in his wildest moments, 
of such large powers of acquisition as we have to-day; 
such swiftness of motion, such celerity of thought, 
such comfort and convenience of life, shared even by 
the poor. And yet, for all that, one who listens well 
hears coming up all the while, "I can't get out ! I can't 
get out ! " and "What lack I yet?" You can hear this 
question in the conversation of those whose emotions 
of liberty and life and joy are almost gone. You can 
read it in the novels and books of Tolstoi as nowhere 
else. You can read it in the works of the philosophers 
of Germany. 

And all these are but varying the cry in one way or 
another — the discontent of the fortunate. How strange 
it is to hear the fortunate ones of our century saying, 
" "What lack I yet ? " It is the cry of social discontent ; 
it is the cry of Sterne's starling in its gilded cage, " I 
can't get out;" it is the cry of the young man of 
Idumea, "All these things I possess and these things I 
have done ; what lack I yet ? " Not happy, not happy ; 
that is their word. 

The achievements of this nineteenth century are the 
assertion of one side of our nature—the self side; the 



THE DISCONTENT OF THE FORTUNATE. 53 

side of individualism. They are the assertion of con- 
quest and power, that which says "I," "me" and 
" mine ;" that which has no doubt as to its ability to 
do ; that which, in its strength of newly discovered 
power, uses that power to make wealth and to gain 
place. 

The conquest of nature and the accumulation of 
power are characteristic of our age. It is an accumula- 
tion of things, for wealth is but things stored up ; 
whether it be dollars, books, houses, mortgages or 
lands — it is simply things. And yet life can not be fed 
on things. You can not feed an eagle on chicken feed. 
You can not feed a spiritual existence on things that 
waste, and things that rust, and things that may be 
touched and handled. The spirit feeds on spiritual 
things. The children of God feed on divine food only, 
and the divine food we feed on is great ideas and 
truths. So there is discontent ; starving to death in the 
midst of plenty. 

Once a traveler upon a desert had lost his way, and 
came at last to where a bag was lying ; he hastened 
toward it, and, opening it, said, " Only pearls, not 
bread ! " Pearls can not feed a body. They can make 
it beautiful, but they can not feed it. And so in the 
midst of all this splendor of wealth you hear this cry 
of want, " I lack ! I lack ! I am not happy." 

This lack is the craving for friendship; community 
of experiences; the touch of human love; the pressure 
of the human heart. Yes, it is a lack, for it is only 
one-half of life these have been living — the personal 
side of it. It is individual — I ; but life is twofold ; life 
is you and I ; life is the personal and the social ; life is 
power for personal uses ; but life is friendship, love, 
pity and charity. Life is all that as well. 

Christ said to the young man, If thou wouldst be 
perfect — rounded out, if you want youth for all your 



54 THE DISCONTENT OF THE FORTUNATE. 

life, then you must touch humanity again ; you must 
mitigate suffering ; share your comforts with others ; 
you must know the common ideas and not the peculiar. 

The social sentiment, then, is that which craves for 
food in this life, the other half of life, the wish to be 
in reciprocal relations with men. The bee needs the 
flower. All these flowers have been made beautiful by 
the butterfly, the moth and the bee. The bee needs the 
flower for the honey that is in it, and the flower needs 
the bee, or there were no flowers. You need me and I 
need you. Each needs the other. In this multipli- 
cation of wants is the variety of our civilization. We 
grow, not by economy, but by expenditures. He is the 
richest man who needs the most, and who buys most, 
whom most men serve. Life is not a mean, a little, 
thing to be nourished with few things. He is the 
greatest who craves most, whom most men are called 
to serve. This is the community of life; this is its< 
fellowship. These are the experiences which man 
asks. 

I can not enjoy that which I have alone. I enjoy 
that most which most share with me. I can not 
take my food if I know that some one person starves. 
We have the right to enjoy it only when all persons 
are fed. That is the other half of life. Without it we 
are imperfect, incomplete. We have the individual, all 
the power and splendor of the New World ; we need 
the social. The personal is developed; we need now 
to develop the social. This is essential to us. With- 
out it it is as if you were trying, without ears, with- 
out eyes, without tongue, or without palate to enjoy 
the world. You are without something that is essen- 
tial to a perfect and complete life. Christianity is,. 
then, that splendid enthusiasm which wants to share 
life with the most people ; that pity which runs at all 
calls; that longing that others may share what we 



THE DISCONTENT OF THE FORTUNATE. 55 

enjoy. In the olden times the Crusaders who went to 
Palestine had this for their war cry, " God wills it ! ' 7 
But Christianity has a better word, and this is its motto, 
" God and my neighbor ! " A heaven which all may 
enjoy; a civilization which reaches to the lowest; liber- 
ties which enfold all ; that is our thought. There is 
the splendor of wealth, as the misery of want. Along- 
side and parallel with the progress is the poverty. 
Immersed in business and excited by triumph, forget- 
ting those who are on this side or on that, we crush 
down our neighbor in our competitive struggle, and 
leave him behind us. 

And that is the selfishness of the fortunate. Progress 
and poverty ; and with you lies the discontent of those 
who are left behind ; a discontent which will never be 
satisfied until what comes to me shall come to every 
one, as good a world, as good a time. This social senti- 
ment is just as valid a factor as is the personal senti- 
ment. You and I make a world — not you or I. This 
is. that without which there can be no life. The boy 
in Florence carried in a procession, his skin gilded with 
refined gold until he was a wonderful thing of beauty, 
died because he could not exhale through the lungs of 
the skin ; and gilded as this generation is, it will die 
if it can not come into active exercise of its powers. 
We have this assertion of the social within us. There 
is not one man in a thousand that can be as selfish as 
he thinks he wants to be. God will not let him be so 
selfish. You attempt to hold your breath, it exhales 
in spite of your efforts. The lungs will do their work. 
Again and again, something awakens the sense of life 
within one, and he must do good to somebody, though 
he does not know why he does it. 

This discontent is a growing force. I want you to 
see how it is growing in the world. There is a discern- 
ment of just what is lacking more and more in you. 



56 THE DISCONTENT OF THE FORTUNATE. 

The young man said, " What lack I yet ? " A great 
many say, What lack I yet ? but there is an increasing 
number who know what is lacking in their enjoyment of 
life ; and just what the young man refused to do, grow- 
ing thousands are consenting to do — descending to live 
with men on terms of friendship and fellowship. 

Let me ask you to note in a few words two conse- 
quences of this social discontent. The first is in the 
field of religion. We all know religion is changing. 
It is not changing, however, because men are bad, but 
because they are better. The direction in which it is 
changing is in that of larger sympathies, is it not? 
The old religious ideas were exclusive, shutting out — 
you are not good enough to come. The new religion is 
inclusive — I want everybody to share what I share. 
Oar splendid Teutonic ancestor, when they were about 
to baptize him, said, as he stood on the edge of the 
baptistry, " Where are my ancestors, my father and 
mother, my grandfather and my people ? " The priest 
said, "They are in hell." "Then," said he, drawing 
his bear skin robe about him, " I will go with my peo- 
ple." There is loyalty to your kin and your common 
humanity — " I will go with my people." 

A ship is sinking in mid ocean. There are only 
enough boats to save a few. ISTow what shall we say 
of a man who declares, I am going to be saved any- 
way ; I don't care for the women and children. Why, 
that man ought to be drowned ten fathoms deep by his 
fellowmen and passengers ! But when the Birkenhead 
went down with six hundred soldiers coming back with 
their wives and children, after their long service in 
Northeastern India, the drum beat and the men stood 
in order, and it was found that there was just room for 
the women, and not one man of the six hundred broke 
ranks. The ship settled down so that the water was 
up to the rail, and still the drum beat. As the water 



THE DISCONTENT OF THE FORTUNATE. 57 

came up the drummer lifted the drum higher and 
higher. The life-boat put off, and the six hundred men 
went down with the ship. Not one man so anxious for 
his own salvation that he would steal the place that 
belonged to the women and children. 

This is the inclusiveness of the new religion. Let us 
have heaven for all, or else join with the majority. If 
the most of the folks are not there I, for one, want to 
go where they are. " I am for Noble Aureole, O God," 
says one in Browning's Paracelsus. " I am for Noble 
Aureole. I am upon his side come weal or woe; re- 
ward him or I waive reward. Find place for him, or 
he shall be king elsewhere and I his slave forever. 
There are two of us." That is the cry of the new faith 
and I believe it is a valid cry. And it is a- good cry, 
it is born out of God's own thought of sympathy, the 
social sentiment. 

Passing this, however, I touch a phase of the social 
life. This social sentiment is asserting itself in many 
ways. Right under the shadow of Westminster Abbey 
is a plat of land almost priceless now in its value. Years 
and years ago a shoemaker, who owned it, gave it to 
the childrens' hospital, out of his love for little children. 
Pounding away upon his lap- stone, despised by those 
who passed him by, as he thought, " after I go there will 
be something for those who are in want." Six hundred 
pounds a year for little children. Years have passed 
by, and the wealth of banks can not buy that land, and 
its priceless rental is expended for thousands of chil- 
dren, all because one man would not be saved alone, 
and life meant to him something more than amassing 
a fortune. 

This is developing into a passion now. It is like the 
old crusade, more and more come into it. I will not 
enjoy this civilzation alone, that is the thought of it. 
There are two of us. Where shall I begin to tell the 



58 THE DISCONTENT OF THE FORTUNATE. 

story ? Every union of mankind which is for mutual 
help, is but the assertion of the social sentiment. I 
could get on alone ; I will not get on alone. I will get 
on so that my neighbors shall share what I enjoy. The 
trades-unions are based unconsciously on this. Every 
brotherhood of men and women is based on this social 
sentiment. We stand together; we are based in the 
community of our relationships, in the fellowships of 
humanity, in touching hand to hand. I will take a 
little less comfort for one, and more comfort for all ; 
the larger average, if the level is less. 

How many a man leaves the New England hills and 
goes to New York or Boston, and makes his fortune 
there ; he is tired of his narrow and mean life. By and 
by fortune has come to him ; leisure has come ; the 
social sentiment begins to work within him ; " what 
lack I yet?" At first it is dull and undefined. By 
and by his thoughts go back. All the narrowness and 
meanness of the old place is gone. How good the 
water he drank from the spring ! How sweet the ap- 
ples he ate from the tree ! He goes back there for a 
vacation, renews some old relationships of his boyhood, 
sits in the old church pew once again, forgets the ser- 
mon in going back in memory over the scenes of the 
past. Then he begins to make beautiful the town. His 
love pours itself in a refluent tide. He wants to make 
the town beautiful out of gratitude. Their lives were 
narrow, he was not mistaken. Why not make men out 
of the boys there by giving them a good time ? That 
is not an uncommon thing. All through the New Eng- 
land villages the sons go back again to make beautiful 
the old homstead, or hearthstone, or the town in which 
they lived. 

-* Charity is changing. It used to be pity. It is not 
pity now. It is the equalization of opportunity. The 
new religion takes the social as well as the individual 



THE DISCONTENT OF THE FORTUNATE. 59 

into its life. Here are employers enlarging the life of 
their employees, giving them a larger share in the 
product of labor. All ameliorations of condition, all 
schemes of association in which members share bene- 
fits, spring out of this thought. 

There came to this country, not many years ago, a 
boy who went into a butcher shop ; and from being a 
butcher he became a large packer of meats in Milwau- 
kee. He had a certain taste for that which was beauti- 
ful. He had an aim, something toward which he could 
work. Thirty or forty years he kept his secret, only 
told his wife. E"o little children played about their 
house. He never told his plan, but a purpose was in 
his mind. One by one wonderfully beautiful pictures 
came to that house. It was a poor house. Five thous- 
and dollars would build a great deal better house than 
he has lived in for twenty years, and than he lives in 
now. Last year his dream came true. He built an art 
gallery at an expense of a hundred thousand dollars. 
He put into it all the pictures he had in his house, and 
there are over a hundred thousand dollars worth. He 
put a hundred thousand dollars with it in order to keep 
it up and enrich it in time to come. The social senti- 
ment — think of it ! What poetry there was in that 
man's heart ! What a spring of social life has kept 
bubbling there. No one but his wife ever knew it for 
thirty or forty years. God knew it and watched over 
it ; it welled up, and at last it came forth ; and now as 
long as the world stands, that spring of the beautiful 
will go out to nourish the lives of those who are sad 
and sorrowful. 

Shall we die of starvation because we will not be 
friendly and social and helpful and love one another? 
It is a mighty tide that is rolling in upon us. The new 
triumphs of our civilization are going to be conquests 
of misery, trouble and sickness ; colleges, schools of 



60 THE DISCONTENT OF THE FORTUNATE. 

technology, play-grounds for children — all these things 
are going to come. Men are thinking about them 
more than they are thinking about who is going to be 
President of the United States. It will come ; it must 
come — come as the tide rolls in ; because the great At- 
lantic rolls behind, " throbbing responsive to the far-off 
orbs." "What lack I yet? I ask each of you. There 
is a look of discontent on some of your faces; a lack 
of happiness in your lives ; of freshness in the water 
you drink ; of sweetness and relish in the food you eat. 
"What do you lack ? What does any man lack ! Con- 
tact and touch ; reciprocity of men, helping others, 
ministering to others ; and that is what you lack — 
touch and response with the great human tides that 
come and go. This is life and here is happiness. This 
is the secret of it. 

I knew one man who found his life by having pity 
for a horse on a cold day, whose blanket had fallen 
down under his fore feet. He lifted it up and put it in 
its place again. On another he found the incheck too 
tight, and he loosened it. And when he once got 
started that way, the whole universe could not stop 
that man from being a christian ; because he was borne 
on the great tide of the social sentiment. 

So amidst this splendid organization of power of 
the nineteenth century, let us hail the coming of the 
rising tide of the social sentiment. Life comes full 
circle. " God and my neighbor " is the watch word 
of the new religion in social as well as in spiritual life. 



And now, let Thy blessing be upon us. Make us to 
think of our true value to ourselves, to each other, and 
to Thee. What we may be, that we shall be; over 
whatsoever obstructions we may stumble, at some time 



THE DISCONTENT OF THE FORTUNATE. 61 

we shall come to ourselves. We feel a pity for those 
who lack any of the senses which make life enjoyable; 
they suffer loss. At some time they shall have that 
which they lack now. There is not a single thing 
which we could enjoy but what we shall enjoy ; not one 
wish ever breathed across the surface of the mind but 
what some fruition shall come. All we lack we shall 
some time have. God ! help us, while we yet live, to 
spare suffering and sorrow and loss to those that are 
yet living. It is to spare the losses in this world that 
we urge to kinder thinking and to better living. And 
now, let Thy blessing be upon us, through the days 
that are to come. Strengthen us in our weakness, give 
us clearness of insight in our confusion, through Jesus 
Christ, our Lord. 



THE HARVEST OF A QUIET EYE. 



THE HARVEST OF A QUIET EYE. 

" Consider the lilies of the field, hoiv they grow." 
Matthew, vi., 28. 

^iJX reading the parables of Jesus we think of the 
(^\ lessons he draws, but we do not often notice what 
C W minute observation and careful attention he gave 
to these little things of nature and of life. " Consider 
the lilies.'' He was the first one to bend down and read 
" the secret of a weed's plain heart." "What was the 
lesson ? The providing love of God. That is a great 
subject. How would the learned doctors have treated 
it ': He Bays, " Look at the lilies — their beauty. If 
God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and 
to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much 
more clothe you. ve of little faith?" 

How much minute attention and long thought there 
was given to this flower ! A member of the Chicago 
Board of Trade or a "Wall street broker could not have 
said that. He would never have thought of stopping 
long enough to look at the lily. I especially note this 
minute observation of little things on the part of Jesus. 
The sparrow alighting on the ground, the cry of the 
raven's callow brood, the humble business of fisher- 
men, the mending" of old clothes, and water bottles, 
the anxiety of a woms who has lost a piece of money 
— all these are familiar to us from long reading, but 



66 THE HARVEST OF A QUIET EYE. 

think bow much leisure they required. They are what 
Wordsworth calls "the harvest of a quiet eye." 

"In common things that round him lie 
Some random truths he can impart ; 
The harvest of a quiet eye 

That broods and sleeps on his own heart." 

In these words we find the Christ's philosophy of life ; 
that the great secrets of God lie hid in little things ; 
that nature and God are closely identified, and that a 
weed may whisper what a philosopher may not know ; 
that there is infinite leisure to an immortal soul ; time 
enough to see and note the things that lie about; time 
enough to do good as you go along; that there is no 
need of anxiety, and that provision is made for us and 
care is had of us. When you open your Bibles, then, 
read between the lines of the parables for this "harvest 
of a quiet eye." 

Galton, in his Art of Travel, in giving advice to an 
exploring party in Australia, says : " Interest yourself 
chiefly in the progress of your journey, and do not look 
forward to its end with eagerness. In this way you 
will learn the capabilities of the country you traverse ; 
and when some months have passed you will be sur- 
prised at the great distance you have traveled over, and 
the enjoy meat you have had." 

Over half my life has gone, measuring by the average 
of life. I am now traveling over that table-land which 
lies between thirty and fifty, having made the ascent of 
youth. By and by I shall begin to descend. One ought 
to know something about life by this time; to have 
made some observations; forrned 'some opinion of the 
country. Views of life are various, and are largely col- 
ored by personal experience. Mine has been a happy 
life. I hardly know why. Much comes from the birth, a 
cheerful outlook. The habit of enjoying little things, 



THE HARVEST OF A QUIET EYE. 67 

of taking interest in the progress of my journey, has 
had much to do with it. 

Life may be looked upon as a troubled journey 
through this world. A Venetian epigram says, " Why 
so struggle the people and cry? To get food, to beget 
children and to feed them as best one can ? Further than 
this attaineth no man, struggle howsoever he will." 

Life, according to the purely scientific thought, is a cor- 
respondence between external nature and internal forces. 
The struggle of life is to maintain this balance. It is 
a struggle calling for strength, skill, judgment ; an im- 
mense game of chess, with no pity for the vanquished. 

There is also the view of life of the pessimist : " Is 
life worth living?" And there is the commercial view : 
"Life a getting on," with the fear of not getting on as 
its hell, and the joy of having got on as its heaven. All 
these are views of life current in society ; but I look 
upon life in this world as one of the experiences of an 
immortal spirit on its travels. One of them I say. For 
doubtless it has had many similar experiences before it 
came here, and shall have many more after it leaves here. 
Seventy years of life seems to have been apportioned 
as the period of stay. It is time enough if well used, to 
learn most of the things to be known. Seventy years 
of stay in this world,, as if you should say, " I have 
two years to spend in Europe." 

Coming into this world one has to learn its language 
and its customs. This takes some time, and one's pleas- 
ure in it depends upon careful attention to them. But 
on the whole the general plan of it does not differ from 
that of other worlds I seem to have lived in. It may 
be there was some pre-existent state in which I was 
familiar with them. Or, it may be, that living close to 
the great Heart and Mind, I am reading them from 
him direct, as when between two friends there is an 
interchange of thought. 



68 THE HARVEST OF A QUIET EYE. 

I find that I have business given me to do here. Life 
is not loitering. I am not furnished with provision 
for the whole journey. It is expected that I shall live 
oft the country. I must provide myself with the 
things I need. So I have this thing to do — to take 
care of myself. But further, I find that I am to explore 
the country, as if I were to make a report of it. I find 
pleasure in it, not as a distinct thing from my business, 
but blended with it. There is pleasure in the business 
and business in the pleasure. 

I have found that there is no need of hurry. Once I 
thought there was, but now I know that there is no need 
of haste. The stars move without haste and without 
rest, and each seed knows its appointed season. If you 
are going to live forever why should you be in a hurry ? 
If you had to make the tour of the earth in eighty days, 
there might be some need ; but you have all the time 
there is. " Time immeasurable by numbers that have 
name." 

One loses much by being in a hurry. You can not 
see the interesting things. If you push on to the next 
thing you miss this that lies near you. And singu- 
larly enough, you never reach the next thing. It is 
like " to-morrow," which never comes. They who live 
in to-morrow can not enjoy to-day. Thoreau had a 
parable of a horse, a hound and a dove, which he was 
perpetually pursuing but never found. He said, too, 
that there was little use in going abroad to look for 
strange things. They could be found at home. All 
that Dr. Kane saw in the Arctic regions, he could find 
near Walden. 

Why should I be in a hurry ? Why should I assume 
that I have to find out everything in seventy years ? 
Seventy years is not a moment in the eternal clock that 
marks my hours. I see that the children prepare very 
leisurely for their journey. They play, and sleep, and 



THE HARVEST OF A QUIET EYE. 69 

eat, many years ; as if some one had said, " there is no 
hurry." It takes thirty years for the body to get ready 
for the journey, and quite as many for the mind to get 
a grasp of its powers. All this suggests to me that 
there is no hurry. And when I talk with those who 
are nearly through their journey they tell me, "I was 
in too much of a hurry, I ought to have waited, or 
gone more slowly. I have missed many things. I 
have made many mistakes.'' 

Nor am I anxious, either about myself or the world. 
Why should I be '? The world was here before I came, 
and will be here after I am gone. It was made by some 
one else. Its laws are not of my forming. I find gla- 
cial scratches on the sides of the hills, but few tokens 
of man. Were I to do my utmost, I could not seriously 
damage it. As for myself I need not be anxious, though 
I must be attentive. Wonderful provision is made for 
comfort, safety and pleasure. There is air and light, 
a productive earth, good roads. I have certain in- 
stincts, and when I walk in the paths " which august 
laws ordain,'' I have protection. There is little danger 
of being lost if I keep in the way. For instance, there 
is the way of justice and truth. So many have walked 
in the way, that it is very plain. The child need not 
stray. 

Very noticeable as I go along, is the provision for 
enjoyment. The things beautiful are very many. Every 
bird and every flower u enjoys the air it breathes." 
They do not sing for me, but for themselves, and yet 
"mine is the glee." "Thus pleasure is spread through 
the earth in stray gifts, to be claimed by whoever shall 
find." As I am in no hurry I can stop to look and 
listen. And being in no anxiety, I find that I am well 
repaid. What does it matter whether I make one mile 
or a hundred, in a day? So, very much of enjoyment 
comes into my life from little things — things not meant 



70 THE HARVEST OF A QUIET EYE. 

for me, but which I possess. Thus the beautiful pic- 
tures which are painted for others I enjoy. A man may 
say that they are his, that he paid for them, but I en- 
joy them. The playing of children, the pleasant sight 
of rooms lighted by fires around which families gather, 
these I enjoy. The whole world is full of pleasant 
sights and sounds, if you are not in a hurry and are 
not anxious. 

I have found most excellent company on this jour- 
ney. It is really wonderful how many pleasant people 
you see. And I had been told otherwise, that I should 
find strangers, or those who thought only of them- 
selves, or even worse. 

This certainly has not been my experience. Almost 
every one has said " G-ood morning," and has wished 
me " a good night." That in itself is pleasant — the 
wish of a kindly heart. Then, too, I have had many a 
cup of water given me by those who saw I was thirsty, 
and many a traveler has opened his wallet to share his 
provision. Many a home here and there has opened its 
hospitable door. Indeed, like Brutus, I can say, "I 
never met a man but he was true to me." Many real 
friendships have come out of this. I find that we are 
all upon business, though not upon the same business. 
It is pleasant to exchange information, to compare 
notes. What one has not seen another has. 

I like to talk with children who are just beginning the 
journey. This has encouraged me many times. Also 
with old people, who know so much more about life than 
I. Very helpful and pleasant, too, are the thoughts and 
experiences of those who traveled the road a long time 
ago. Some of them have left reports. I read their 
books, their observations, experiences, advice. Often 
I stop and spend hours comparing their observations 
with my own. Others have left songs behind them. It 
is good to sing as one goes. It blends with the music 



THE HARVEST OF A QUIET EYE. 71 

of nature; it makes one forget the dust and weariness. 
And I find many helpful customs left by those who 
have passed through, little suggestions as to comfort. 
The very road I walk over is the result of their labor. 
From the stories of the pioneers I see that it was once 
a wilderness, with high hill, drear desert and dark 
morass. It is not so now. Here is a traveled road, the 
hills are brought low, the swamps nearly drained. 
Some one has done good work. I find that that was 
part of their business here, to make roads for me to 
walk over. 

This suggests to me that it is part of my business 
to work on the road. It is by no means plain or easy, 
especially for children. It is the young, I find, who 
suffer most, through their ignorance and weakness. If 
they knew as much as I they would avoid many dan- 
gers. I see children wandering off on by-paths. I 
hear their cries as they wander in the woods. I see 
them stumble over stones and obstructions in the way. 
I myself have stumbled over similar ones. I am in no 
hurry. Why not improve the way a little ? One can 
level it a little, cast out a few stones, lift away a log or 
so, or we could nail a word to a tree, telling of the dan- 
ger that is near. 

Sometimes I have stopped a long time to help those 
who came along, over a hard place. It was pleasant 
work, and I still carry the sweet thanks I had. Or I 
find by the wayside others who have met with misfor- 
tune. They are bruised, or tired, or discouraged. I am 
in no hurry, why not stop and give them help ? A word, 
a little strength, and then they will be able to go on. 
Some of the pleasantest memories I expect to carry with 
me are of these. Often in my life I have been accosted 
by those whose names and faces I had forgotten, who 
reminded me that at some time I had helped them. 



72 THE HARVEST OF A QUIET EYE. 

I am of course passed on my journey by those who 
are in haste. They urge me on, " Hurry up ! Make 
haste ! You'll not get there ! You'll miss it !" I ask 
them, u miss what?" They can't tell me — only that I 
must hurry. But I find, by and by, as I come up 
with them, that the thing they were in haste to 
reach, they do not seem to have found. They have 
been to California, Colorado, Montana, but I can not 
see that they have found anything that I have not. 
When I tried to tell them of the books I read, or the 
songs I heard, or the beautiful sights I saw, they had 
seen none of these things, felt no interest. On the 
whole I found no reason to envy them. I have met 
many of these anxious people. They are always afraid 
that there will not be enough to eat at the inn, or beds 
enough. They are continually fearful, or say, " What 
if there should be a storm ?" or " What if I should be 
ill?" 

But I have found that all this does no good. There 
is plenty of provision for the traveler who is not too 
anxious. One day's provision is quite enough at a time. 
Much of the provision they make, or carry along with 
them, I see is mouldy, or the weight of it bears them 
down. 

Of course I have had annoyances, disappointments, 
discomforts and troubles. But many of these are due 
to my ignorance and inexperience; others to my inat- 
tention or carelessness ; yet others to the ignorance or 
inconsiderateness of others ; and further to great storms 
which I can not control. I have stumbled over the 
stones in the path ; I have lost my way, and slept nights 
in the mountains. But all of this is little compared 
with the pleasure I have had. And I have learned to 
attend to nry ways, and have learned to bear what I 
can not avoid. I have found " strength sufficient for 



THE HARVEST OF A QUIET EYE. 73 

the day," and " with every temptation a way of escape." 
As the poet says : 

' ' So near is grandeur to our dust, 
So close is God to man, 
When duty whispers low ' Thou must/ 
The youth replies 'I can.' " 

In this journey I have found other provision made 
for me. In the night I have heard songs, and when 
discouraged I have been suddenly strengthened; or 
when I have been standing where two ways met, and I 
have been in doubt which to take, I have seen a finger 
point ; or when in trouble, I have heard voices. In the 
presence of nature I have felt the 

" Joy of elevated thought." 

It is not easy ta tell what all this is. I have talked 
with some who have had the same experiences, and with 
others who said there was nothing of the kind. They 
have said it was my own imagination ; that all this was 
nothing but nature. I do not think so, but I do not 
discuss the question. The unseen is very real to me. 

I have asked, and have been asked often : What is 
the end? Many I know have made a shorter journey 
than mine. I do not know the end, or what comes 
next. I have seen little children suddenly stop and dis- 
appear. It was certainly something pleasant that 
awaited them. They had no fear — no cry of terror — 
rather a joyous look upon their faces as if they were 
seeing some new thing. 

Some men and women have shrunk back, have had 
fearful looks. But they were chiefly those who were in 
a hurry, or were anxious. One friend I see now, whose 
face will ever wear a look of peace. Another, who 
lived long ago, said, " Life, we've been long together." 
Another, " Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit." 



74 THE HARVEST OF A QUIET EYE. 

This world I have been traveling through is so beau- 
tiful, I have found so much to interest me in it, it prom- 
ises so much in the future, that I am in no haste to 
leave it. But surely the same One who sent me here 
has other beautiful worlds which I should equally enjoy. 
Perhaps the report I have to make of this one will in- 
terest those who live there. Perhaps the experience I 
have gained here will be of value there. 

I have had many guide books put into my hands. 
Some good, some worthless. One friend especially, who 
went over the road long ago, left words I value above 
all others. He was one of the pioneers ; or, rather, he 
marked out the new way. Most travelers, I find, try 
the old path some time before they find the new. It 
was from him that I learned to consider the lilies, and 
the birds ; and to stop and speak to people. His thought 
was, that if one felt an interest in every one, helped the 
weak, or, as he said, loved everybody, the way was 
more interesting. I certainly have found it so. It has 
saved me much lost time, and has helped me to find my 
way. There are many lives of this man written ; many 
explanations of his way; but, on the whole, none of 
them are necessary. His way explains itself. But I 
am sure that there is no world where he is not ; and I 
repeat to myself words of one of the singers : 

' ' I know not where His islands lift 
Their fronded palms in air ; 
I only know I can not drift 
Beyond His love and care. 

And so, beside the Silent Sea, 

I wait the muffled oar ; 
No harm from Him can come to me 

On ocean or on shore." 



THE FORGIVENESS OF SIN. 



76 THE FORGIVENESS OF SIN. 



Our Heavenly Father, we come out of the experiences 
of the past week. Here are those who mourn, whose 
hearts are sorrowful, whose arms are empty, and who 
can not get used to this sense of loneliness. God 
bless them. Oh, Thou wilt bless them. Patience will 
come. Patience to bear the pain which one can not 
escape ; and through the days that come, shall come 
this habit of bearing the pain, and throwing forward 
the thought into that world where are those whom 
Thou hast taken to Thyself. Bless those who come 
with any trouble in their hearts with regard to this 
world's affairs ; who have not work enough, or pay 
enough, or some trouble with regard to business. Let 
them know that they can carry this burden too ; help 
them to commit their care to Thee, and talk to Thee 
about it ; and so shall light fall upon the dark question, 
and strength shall come upon the weary way. 

And, our Father, these little children, we bring them 
again, as the mothers brought them to Jesus. We must 
needs bring them ; they are on our hearts at all times. 
We fear for them in this great world. Help us not to 
fear, but to trust them to Thee. They are Thine. To 
them, by and by, Thou shalt trust the concerns of this 
great world. IS r ow help us to be patient with them, 
and love them intensely, and give them the thoughts of 
the new life, so that continually they may build them- 
selves up in the image of Christ, through the spirit 
that is in Thee. 

Be with every young man here, just entering into 
business. May the principles of truth and righteousness 



THE FORGIVENESS OF SIN. 77 

regulate all his life in the smallest act. Be with all 
mothers of little children, whose lives must needs be 
passed in the household, and to whom come, at times, 
the thought of the monotony of it, each day's work 
like all other days' work, still let them see the need of 
this service of love, work that God has appointed them 
to do, and that at some time the children shall rise up 
and call them blessed. 

Our Heavenly Father, again we ask that a blessing 
may come to this people ; upon those whose conditions 
we do not know. Their hearts 'may not be read; they 
carry secret troubles ; relieve them from their trouble, 
and into their darkness let light come. And, our 
Father, grant that to all may come a sense of love ; 
grant this to those who have no feeling or wish for for- 
giveness of sin; before whom no ideal fixes itself; who 
feel no sense of obligation to take a world upon their 
hearts. God grant that to them may come this most 
needed of all the lessons of life ; that they shall give 
themselves to the world, even as he who loved us, and 
gave himself for us. And may the peace of God rest 
upon us now, and evermore. 



THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS. 



' ' WJierefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are for- 
given ; for she loved much : ' ' 

Luke vii, 47. 

C^f^UlB doctrine of the forgiveness of sins is a pecu- 
4vy liar gift of Christianity to the world. It was 
'u av this which won such welcome for its message ; 
it is this which today wins for it such a large hearing, 
for our gospel was spoken first not to the strong, but 
to the weak ; not to the righteous, hut to sinners ; not 
to those who were saved, hut to those who had lost 
their lives ; to the weary, to the troubled, to the pub- 
lican and to the sinner. 

This incident of the annointing of the feet of Christ 
occurs just after the taunt had been uttered that Jesus 
was a friend of publicans and sinners and the parable 
of forgiveness was spoken at this time. Who this 
woman was, who crept up behind him as he sat at this 
feast, which had been made for him by Simon the 
Pharisee, we have no means of knowing. Perhaps it 
was Mary of Magdala ; perhaps Mary of Bethany. In 
Longfellow's "Divine Tragedy" she is represented as 
Mary of Magdala. But it matters not. It was some 
one whose life was broken, but who had heard him 
speak, had looked into his face, and perhaps had re- 
ceived his blessing, who ever after that had found her 
way of life repugnant. So she followed him, until at 



80 THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS. 

last as he rested in the house of Simon the Pharisee, 
she crept up behind him. She did not stop to think of 
the propriety of what she was doing, or how her intru- 
sion might be looked upon by those who were present. 
All she knew was that he who had set forth her life in 
its darkness, and who had given her a hope and a long- 
ing to be better was there. And as she stood behind 
him, her tears began to fall upon his feet ; she hastily 
sought to wipe them off, having nothing but her long 
hair with which to do it, and then she opened a box of 
precious ointment, which she had brought with -her, 
and anointed his feet. 

Of course an incident of that kind would be a surprise 
to all the people who were in such a condidion as was 
this Pharisee, who had never allowed himself to touch 
that which was evil, and who prided himself upon his 
righteous life ; and he wondered at this One allowing 
himself to be touched by one whom he considered 
evil. And then came the parable ; he asked Simon 
which of the debtors would love him most, and he said, 
" He to whom he forgave most." Jesus told him he 
rightly judged. Then pointing to the woman he said, 
" Her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved 
much." This tells you, why her tears fell, why she 
broke through the bar which had been put between 
her and her kind, and came to him to express the full- 
ness of her gratitude, out of the depth of her love. 
And so Jesus said to Simon, "Her sins, which are 
many, are forgiven, for she loved much." And to her 
he said, u Thy faith hath saved thee, go in peace." 

I take this to be the very best illustration of what 
was meant by Jesus Christ when he spoke of the for- 
giveness of sins. His life of gentleness and purity 
created a desire for better things in those who were 
living wrong lives. " We needs must love the highest 
when we see it." We know how the life of Zaccheus 



THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS. 81 

seemed to himself when Christ sat beside him silent; 
and how the life of the woman of Samaria seemed to 
her when he spoke to her; and how every one, as he 
came near them, felt within them this sense of their 
incompleteness, their lack of life, their positive and 
present sin becoming apparent to them, and a longing 
to be better ; and with this longing to be better, and 
this leaving of the old life, they were brought into the 
new conditions of life which are everywhere present. 

This air about us is healing and helpful to some ; 
hurtful to others who, by foolish exposure, or causes 
they can not control, suffer from inflamed lungs. 
We say to them, Go where there are resinous breezes ; 
go where there is a purer air. And if they go into the 
resinous air of the pine woods of Georgia or Alabama, 
very soon the healing quality that is in that air begins 
to build up the broken lungs, and health comes. In a 
certain sense you may call this nature's forgiveness, 
when one has the consciousness of the wrong that has 
been done physically, and, needing to be well, puts him- 
self under the conditions by means of which health 
shall come. Bring a diseased body into new and 
healthful conditions, and the healing process is set up 
and life comes. 

When these troubled and diseased souls and broken 
lives came under the influence of these new thoughts 
of Jesus Christ, they came to love that which is best 
and to hate that which is evil. Then, all at once, 
the health processes of their souls were set up, the 
healing began, and health or salvation came to them ; 
and whether the word forgive had been pronounced or 
not, they had been forgiven. So with this beautiful 
thought of peace — forgiveness of sin. Christianity went 
into the world in the spirit of Jesus Christ, and it found 
people everywhere in conscious need of it; for no one 
could be satisfied with the life he was living at that 

6 



82 . THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS. 

time. Even the most correct and noble of the Stoics 
lifted up his arms as if trying to attain something that 
was beyond, feeling that it was not enough to make 
one's life correct ; not enough simply to refrain from 
doing wrong; missing something which we believe 
Christ came to give — a positiveness to life. 

So the Christian saint, or the Christian soldier, 
preached this gospel of the forgiveness of sins ; 
preached it to the slave who, in his slavery to sin, had 
descended into the lowest depths of degradation of 
spirit ; preached it to the woman who had fallen, and 
to the man under influence of evil habit ; preached it 
to weary wanderers, seeking to bring them back to the 
place they had lost. That is why they were received 
so gladly, because on every hand were the dissatisfied, 
the troubled, the broken and the sinful, who longed 
for peace and longed for rest; and it said to them, 
"Your life is not lost, you may find it again; your 
place is not filled, you may take it again. God's face 
has not a frown ; you shall see his smile again. Leave 
the old, take on this new life ; " and it pronounced the 
forgiveness of sins. 

This doctrine of the forgiveness of sin, with no theo- 
logical entanglement or mystification, was pronounced, 
just as your mother pronounced it in times past, when 
you said, "I am sorry I did it," and she said, "Well, I 
forgive you," you having to suffer the pain in conse- 
quence of the wrong which you did, but caring not for 
that, only wanting to have the smile come back to that 
face again, to feel the softness of her touch upon your 
cheek, to gain her favor again. In just such simple 
ways as this Christ forgave, and it is so that God for- 
gives the sins of the world. 

I know how changes have come into this thought in 
the days past, but they were not put there by Christ, who 
simply said to every one of broken life and of troubled 



THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS. 83 

spirit, Are you sorry for what you have done; do 
you want to be well, true, strong and whole again; 
will you leave that old life ; will you seek to make 
restitution for the wrong which you have done ; will 
you bear patiently the pain which is the consequence of 
your wrong doing; will you devote yourself in the fu- 
ture to making right, as far as possible, that which you 
have made wrong? Then your sins are forgiven you. 
In just such a simple manner as this, just as I might 
say to a child to-day, so he said then. This was the 
glad tidings that went out into the world, and this is 
the forgiveness of sins. 

Let us leave that thought for just a moment and take 
up what I may call its complementary thought of retri- 
bution. For this is only one side of the truth, and 
retribution is another. Here are these great laws, which 
we call the laws of nature or the laws of God, laws for 
the ordering of the world in all its beauty and strength 
and goodness ; laws which were meant to make every- 
thing work together for good to the whole world, but 
which we break, consciously or ignorantly. Law r s 
broken, consciously or ignorantly, bring with them 
their consequences of pain, or their consequences, as 
we say, of punishment. And every one comes into 
conflict with them at some time. Is there any one who 
has not either ignorantly or consciously broken them, 
and found himself out of relation with them when 
they became painful to him ? The moment one is out 
of relation with these laws they become sharp and in- 
sistent, and the consequence becomes the cause of fu- 
ture ill. 

When you have taken cold it is easier to take 
another cold. The lung is inflamed, and now the 
balmiest of airs and the slightest exposure induces 
more, and the injury thus set up propagates itself until 
at last the whole delicate structure of the lung is broken 



84 THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS. 

down. Trivial at first, it brings its consequence, and 
that consequence becomes a cause, and that cause brings 
another consequence, and so, each effect becoming a 
cause, these broken laws roll down upon us their bur- 
den of consequences. And they never forgive, and 
they make no allowance for ignorance or inexperience. 
The little child puts its hand upon the stove, and the 
heat burns it just as much as it would burn me in my 
wisdom and knowledge of it ; and the pain becomes 
there the consequence of the wrong it has done. Why 
should the little thing suffer so ? It is because God has 
to teach us in that way to avoid the fire. 

All we call pain, all we call punishment in this world, 
is simply a natural and necessary consequence of wrong 
doing. The thing to be remembered is that, in all this 
natural order, there is no pity, and there is no forgiveness 
for any wrong. So in the Old Testament, among the 
Hebrews, it was indeed a serious thing to do wrong, and 
they couched their thought of it in words like these: 
" The wages of sin is death." 

It is death to the tissue that touches the stove, and 
it sloughs off; it is death to the lung which exposes 
itself to the sharp wind ; it is death to the inflamed 
eye that looks to the light ; it is death to the soul 
that speaks untruth, does injustice, or lives impurely. 
"The wages of sin is death." That is nature's own 
law. Whatsoever we sow, that shall we reap. He 
that sows wheat, shall reap wheat ; he that sows oats, 
reaps oats. Sow a lie, and you reap falsehood; sow 
injustice, and you reap cruelty; sow impurity, and 
you reap the consequences of it. Whatsoever one 
sows, that shall he reap. Nature is just, impartial 
and equitable, in all transactions. Sow kindness, 
and you reap kindness ; sow truth, and you reap truth ; 
sow love, and you reap love. The law is as just on 
one side as on the other, but with no forgiveness, and 



THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS. 85 

with no pity. That, and that only, that you sow, shall 
you reap. 

That is what gives depth to the Greek tragedies. 
They are all hased upon this one thought, that an 
action once committed can never be recalled ; a wrong 
can never be made right ; a lie can never be over- 
taken. Poor (Edipus who, all unconsciously, has slain 
his father, and done the great deed of wrong, living in 
ignorance and innocence as he knows, yet through all 
the years has to meet the fate that has been awaiting 
him, and has to pay with blindness and poverty and 
death, for the wrong he has done. 

Yes, in every case it is so. We are taught by those 
old Greek tragedies that we can not escape the conse- 
quences of our sin. There is no forgiveness in the or- 
der of nature, or in that old order, for wrong doing. 
In the works of George Eliot, this thought is brought 
out with peculiar force ; and perhaps this is the one 
great work that she has been able to do by her writ- 
ings, to show us this truth, that " The wages of sin is 
death." "Curds can not be turned to cream again, nor 
the half-made crock be turned to clay again." 

That is the thought, and that is the fact in nature 
everywhere. What we do can not be recalled. It be- 
longs not only to history, and is written in our memory, 
but to the great complicated effects in the world. What 
would not a man give when he has sown mustard seed 
in his garden, and it comes up and spreads among his 
plants, choking them out, to have it out again ? What 
would not a man give to call back a lie he has thrown 
out into the world ? But he can not recall it. It has 
slipped from his grasp, and now it goes on propagating 
its kind. What would not one give to be able to recall 
the harsh word which he has spoken to one he loves, 
and which went jarring and crashing through the 



86 THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS. 

loved one's tender heart? He can not recall it. 
Things can never be just as they were before. 

So all these teachers, nature, science, the old Greek 
tragedies, the sharp insistence of the Hebrew and early 
scriptures and these later words of George Eliot, all 
teach us this doctrine of retribution, this certain con- 
nection of cause and effect. Do you remember the 
beautiful, glad young man in Romola who would have 
no trouble about him, and who, to avoid all trouble, 
spoke a lie and did wrong and then found his feet en- 
tangled in the quicksand and there was no help for him ? 
Do you remember Hettie in "Adam Bede?" Do you 
remember the consequences of her sin? There was 
no help for her. She had all that suffering of threat 
ened death and transportation. She could not es- 
cape it. Do you remember these, and the beautiful 
Gwendolin, who suffered a life of pain for her mistakes ? 

Thus the second thought I am trying to bring out is 
the certainty of retribution ; and now these two 
thoughts complement each other ; each false without the 
other, both true when taken together. If I should 
preach to you all the while a gospel of the forgiveness 
of sins and say that things could be as they once were, 
if you would simply repent, I would speak what could 
not be verified — what would be untrue. You will have 
to stand all the consequences of your sin ; you can not 
escape them. Time will not be long enough for you 
to evade them. You can not hide from them. Oh, no. 

On the other hand, if I keep insisting upon this 
retribution, and the old idea of the helplessness of 
those who have broken the law of nature or of God, I 
should be equally untrue to the facts which are given 
us in the New Testament in the words of Christ. But 
we must put them together, taking each as a fact. 
Here is nature with its certainty of consequences ; here 
is the misery and the punishment that follows every 



THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS. 87 

wrong action ; but here, too, is the love above that, 
which comes to all those who leave the old life and 
long for that which is better. Here is healing for the 
broken limb to reknit the injured tissue ; here is com- 
fort for the broken heart; and love that will restore to 
their places those who are willing to take up the new life. 
Here indeed we have the truth as I understand it 
in Christ Jesus. First, we have to state the one and 
then the other. Both are true, the doctrine of the 
forgiveness of sins for those who have done wrong; 
and equally true the doctrine of the certainty of pain 
and of punishment for all that have done wrong. I do 
not think noble souls care for the pain and punishment. 
It is not that of which they are afraid. If only we could 
get our place again ; if we could take up some of the old 
life ; if we could pray again ; if we could feel a certain 
innocence again, even though it were charged with 
bitter memory, we could bear the pain, we would take 
the punishment, we would do any penance, make any 
restitution. 

And this is what Christ says to these : " You can 
have your place again, if you are sorry for what you 
have done. You can not evade the consequences of 
it; you have to make restitution, so far as you can, 
for the wrong; you will have to bear the pain and 
suffering perhaps through your whole life, but you 
can take your work again, and have the old face with 
its smile above you, and have your position among 
honorable men and women." That is wbat he promised. 
What more do you want ? Would you seek to avoid 
the consequences of your wrong ? You can not, if you 
would. We should simply say this : If I have done 
any one injustice, if I have wronged any one, if I have 
taken money from any one by fraud, that must be re- 
stored ; there is no peace until that is done. If one has 
a million dollars, and it all represents oppression, greedy 



88 THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS. 

cruelty, and force, there shall no peace come to that 
soul in this world, or any other, until restoration and 
restitution is made. There can be no comfort in ill 
gotten gain. There shall be no peace of soul until that 
is made right, and there must be the abandonment of 
that which is wrong and an active longing for that 
which is good. " She is forgiven much, for she loved 
much." If we do not love much, it is because we have 
no sense of having been forgiven much. 

Taking these two together, we will go out into the 
world, shall we not, bearing patiently whatever our 
own ignorance, willfulness or caprice has put upon us ? 
And more than this, seeking so far as we can to over- 
take the wrong that we have done. If one has thrown 
a lie into the world, it can not be undone, it can not be 
overtaken, but he can then devote himself to the truth 
and make truth, which goes with swift and glad feet, 
take much from the power of falsehood. If one has 
done a wrong to a person which can not be recalled, he 
can devote himself to doing right to many persons ; 
though not able to overtake his own act, he can work 
out, perhaps, much of the wrong that is in the world. 

If you have been devoted to injustice in one case, you 
must devote yourself to justice in the other. The evil 
you have done you can not undo, but you can swear 
eternal hatred to the evil to which you were once loyal, 
and devote yourself, with eveiw power you possess, to 
the cause of good, and thus try to make less the effect 
of the evil done in the world. And the more of sad 
memory you have, the more of earnest life there must 
be if you would have forgiveness of sins. The forgive- 
ness of sins — it is no empty phrase. You could not go 
out into peace with simply the word ringing in your 
ears ; nor could it be enough for you to win happiness 
in a future world if there should be simply for you an 
escape from punishment. No, I think some of us 



THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS. 89 

would say that if it were necessary to atone for the 
wrong that we have done we would suffer, willingly, a 
thousand years, if during that time the glad look of 
Him who said He loved us and forgave us, could be 
given us. No ; we are willing to bear the consequences 
of the wrong. We are not cowards. Only let the soul 
cry out: Let me feel that I am forgiven, that you 
will restore me and fill me with that pure spirit, and 
put me in my place again to do my work. That is all 
I ask. 

I have spoken on this thought for two reasons — one 
is because forgiveness is made so hard. We forget how 
easily our mother and father forgave, and that the 
Father above forgives no more tardily or reluctantly. 
We forget that all we asked, as children, was, not that 
we might escape the punishment, but that we might 
see the smile again ; and that the pain of wrong doing 
was the loneliness we felt. I want you to see how simple 
was the forgiveness which was spoken, through the lips 
of Jesus Christ, out of the heart of God. Then I wish 
you to dislodge it from all its theological entanglements, 
that it may come to you in its primitive simplicity 
and gladness ; and that you may see that it is not gained 
by pain, but that pain and penance and restoration 
always accompany it. Then I want you to see how, in 
the depths of the heart, each one who is forgiven feels 
the great emotions of love, and a longing to kiss the 
feet of him who had lived out the life that is before us 
to-day, as a type of what we may be. 

If you have been forgiven much and feel it, then, 
friends who gather here in Christ's name, whenever a 
little child with troubled spirit comes to you and looks 
up at you with appealing eyes, you will feel you must 
help him in that Name. And there is no other Name 
than that. Our forgiveness comes to us through the 
same spirit that came to him. When we have that 



90 THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS. 

same spirit and the love of divine sacrifice he had, then 
the blessing of God, the forgiveness of God, and res- 
toration and happiness comes — as health comes to the 
broken body — bringing a better life. Now, may the 
peace of God be with us evermore. 



THE INNUMERABLE COMPANY. 




THE INNUMERABLE COMPANY. 



" Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which 
have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed 
him." 

I Kings, xix, 18. 

BSORBINGr passions are terrible forces in the 
world, as we know, but their recoil is in pro- 
portion to their power. A man with a passion 
accomplishes great results, but the very absorption of 
his powers in his passion shuts out from his view 
the perspective and blinds him to the consciousness 
of relation with other workers. It is a strange as 
it is a sad thing to know that great reformers pass, 
by easy stages, to become great persecutors. 1 take 
a chapter from the life of Elijah, the prophet, known 
as Elijah the Tishbite, to illustrate this thought. His 
country, through the influence of Jezebel, wife of 
Ahab, a Phoenician woman and a worshipper of Baal, 
was given over to the worship of the gods of the 
Phoenicians. The prophets of Israel were great souls 
studying the conditions of their country, interpreting 
everything from the point of view of great moral and 
religious principles. They came forth from their seclu- 
sion, with messages direct from God, to denounce the 
sins of the court and of the people ; and with their 
" Thus saith the Lord," they were the purifying element 
in Hebrew politics and social and common life. The 



94 THE INNUMERABLE COMPANY. 

priest always becomes a formalist and a literalist, 
whether in that century or in this. The priest always 
likes things as they are ; the routine of worship ; the 
splendor of ceremonial pageant ; the incense and the 
offering. The priest is a blind tool in the hands of an 
unscrupulous king and noble ; but the prophet is the 
independent soul. His message comes to him direct 
from G-od. It is always fresh and full and free. He 
never fears the face of man. It is he that, in the lan- 
guage of Ahab, " Troubled Israel ;" and kings counted 
them as those who stirred up sedition among the 
people. 

Prophets are usually lonely men ; their message 
comes to them while ploughing, or herding cattle, or 
tending sheep, or sitting in the mountains in silent con- 
templation of the movement of affairs. Such an one 
was Elijah, known as the Tishbite. He suddenly ap- 
pears in an exigency in his nation's history. He has 
called together the people at Mount Carmel. He has 
offered them their choice between Jehovah and Baal. 
If Jehovah be God, follow Him ; if Baal, follow him. 
Choose ye this day whom ye will serve. And then in 
fierce exultant passion he has slain the prophets of Baal 
and the prophets of the grove. And now the words of 
the fierce Phoenician queen comes to himself. " So let 
the gods do to me and more also, if I make not thy life 
as the life of one of them by to-morrow about this time." 
He who fears not the king fiees from the queen, and at 
last finds himself amid the dread desolations of Sinai. 

He stands in the mouth of the cave ; the fierce winds 
rend the mountains ; the volcanic fires that have shat- 
tered those great mountains, rock them now on their 
bases. The lightnings play about their black summits. 
Then in the silence that follows this, a still small voice 
asks him, " What doest thou here, Elijah?" He says, 
" I have been very jealous for the Lord God of Hosts, 



THE INNUMERABLE COMPANY. 95 

because the children of Israel have forsaken Thy cove- 
nants, and have thrown down Thine altars and have 
slain Thy prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, 
am left, and they seek my life to take it." It sounds 
like a pitiful plea as if it ought to have its response in 
kindness and sympathy, and there seems a certain hard- 
ness and lack of sympathy in the answer which comes : 
" Go ; return on thy way to the wilderness of Damascus ; 
you have left your place and left your duty, and when 
thou comest, annoint Hazael to be king over Syria. And 
Jehu to be king over Israel ; and Elisha to be prophet 
in thy stead." " I have still left seven thousand men 
in Israel, .all the knees which have not bowed to Baal; 
and every mouth which hath not kissed him." 

It is as if He had said, you are not to think this cause 
rests on you alone. Why do you say, " I have been very 
jealous for the Lord God of Hosts ?" " They seek my 
life to destroy it," as if you and you alone sustained the 
great cause of righteousness in this world. You are 
one among many. Even should you die, this cause 
will not die ; there are seven thousand like yourself 
that have been true to me. 

God rests his cause on no one man, I understand 
these words to mean. God rests his world on no 
one issue. ]STo one battle decides things. The death 
of one man does not stop the movement of things. Sir 
Edward Creasy wrote a book which is called " The Fif- 
teen Decisive Battles of the World." The decisive bat- 
tles of the world can not be numbered by fifteen or one 
hundred. They have been fought out by man with his 
duty and with his God in silence. 

" God's state," says Miltou, "is kingly." Thousands 
at his bidding wait to speed o'er land and sea. One of 
the best results of the National Conference of Chari- 
ties and Correction, which has just closed its session 
here, I count to be this : the introduction of many 



96 THE INNUMERABLE COMPANY. 

workers to each other. Workers on the same lines be- 
come acquainted with each other and also with work- 
ers on related lines. It is very easy for us in our 
egotism to think that we have some great solvent for 
the world's difficulties; some one great key to the 
world's problems; some one great cure-all for the 
world's miseries, and we hasten to advertise it. Each 
man claims for his own thought and plan a preeminence. 
There is an " Ohio Idea," a " Wisconsin Plan," a "JS"ew 
York Method" and a " Michigan Theory." But by 
and by, as men come into the presence of each other, 
they find that these ideas are, after all, peculiar to no 
one State or man, but are common to all. 

There are those here to-day who say the Quincy idea of 
education after all was born in Indiana. Probably it 
was not born here at all, but it was born everywhere at 
once. Other States and other men have worked on the 
same lines for }^ears, and so there is a comparison of 
thought and method. And then there is toleration, 
because we see we work practically in the same lines ; 
and there is charity and there is consideration each for 
the other, and co-operative effort, and our own work 
is seen in its relation to that done by others. Part 
joins part and all parts move toward the whole. What 
was thought to be an isolated attempt is seen to be a 
part of a great common movement. 

A soldier fights as if there were no other soldiers ; he is 
unconscious of the presence of others ; but by and by, as 
the smoke lifts, he knows and thinks, " I am part of this 
regiment, and this regiment is part of an army, and this 
army is moving toward one great end and controlled 
by one great mind." We come to recognize that ideas 
are common to man. It is a very difficult thing, is it 
not, to find out who is the real inventor of anything. 
Who did invent the telephone? Ought a monument 
on Boston common to have been raised to Dr. Jackson, 



THE INNUMERABLE COMPANY. 97 

or should it have been raised to Dr. Martin, as the dis- 
coverer of ether ? Was it Bell on the Clyde, or Fulton 
on the Hudson, that first gave the steamboat to the 
world ? Ought Richard Trevithick to have the credit 
of the locomotive, or ought George Stevenson? There 
are many claims made for the same discovery in every 
nation. 

God does not whisper his secrets into one ear. Noth- 
ing pleases our egotism more than to think we are 
God's confidants. A little girl is very proud to think 
that her teacher confides in her and whispers to her 
some plan ; and we are very proud as men to think that 
we are the repositories of some secret ; something that is 
whispered to us as if we alone were competent to un- 
derstand it, and were faithful to keep it, and strong to 
carry it out. Men over this whole world have been 
claiming to be repositories of God's secrets ; that he 
has whispered to them his truths and to none other. 
He has made known to them his plans of government 
and the methods of his salvation. God has no secrets 
and no confidants and no favorites. His sun shines 
and his rain falls upon evil and upon good, upon just 
and unjust. 

History is full of illustrations of this feeling of Elijah, 
that he only was left of all the good people that are in 
the world to sustain the tottering cause of righteousness. 
A man says, " I stand for the truth, I uphold the truth, 
I have the truth, and I, only I, represent God." If he 
will hold this firm enough he will become a power ; it 
will become an absorbing passion with him. He can do 
much good, and he can do much evil. There are many 
men called good and reformers, concerning whom his- 
tory has not yet given its verdict whether they were on 
the whole helpful or hurtful to the race. 

Every man is mixed, after all. Luther was intol- 
erant and a persecutor. Calvin burned Scrvetus, who 

7 



98 THE INNUMERABLE COMPANY. 

did not accept his teaching. Savanorola when he had 
the power of the Italian government had as bad a 
government as the Medicis had. Ignatius Loyola was 
a man of pure ideas, but he left behind him the Jesuits, 
and Torquemada the Spanish inquisitor. John and 
James wished to sit the one on the right hand, the other 
on the left, in the kingdom of Jesus, and they wished 
that he would call down fire from heaven to burn up 
the Samaritans because they would not open their city 
for their night's lodging. 

This same feeling is found now as of old. People 
think of themselves as a lonely ark that sails the deso- 
late waters of a cruel world ; that God has intrusted to 
them alone his few principles that shall save the world. 
Each claims to have a whispered secret. Given such a 
thought as that and you must have intolerance. In- 
tolerance is the logical development of egotism. It al- 
ways issues in persecution. Every sect, when it has 
had the power, has called in the civil arm to enforce its 
religious decrees, and has become a persecutor. To- 
day certain members of churches demand the prosecu- 
tion of Heber Newton for heresy. Theodore Parker 
was excluded from the Unitarian pulpit. There is an 
opposition to Phillips Brooks as Bishop of Massachu- 
setts on the part of those who think they hold the 
truth. The old mediaeval conception of hell grows out 
of just this one insistance : "1 have been very jealous 
for the Lord of Hosts because men have forsaken Thy 
covenant and have thrown down Thine altars and have 
slain Thy prophets." " I only am left to hold up the 
cause of truth." 

Hells are only great prison houses such as kings used 
to confine political prisoners in, to punish those who 
did not accept their ideas ; and men have conceived 
great prison houses in the nether world to hold those 
who do not believe as they do. 



THE INNUMERABLE COMPANY. 99 

£Tow, on the other hand, this principle stands fast- 
rooted in the order of nature — "I have yet left seven 
thousand in Israel, every knee which hath not bowed 
to Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him." 
The doctrine of universal providence shows that God 
has no favorites. In every nation he that heareth God 
and worketh righteousness is accepted of him. The 
sun shines and the rain falls upon the evil and upon 
the good. There has never been a favorite nation. 
At no time has God bestowed his truth on one man. 
~No one ark sailing lonely waters has ever held the for- 
tunes of the world. To no one pair in Eden was it ever 
given to decide the fate of man. God has given his 
word to prophets in all ages, and these have told his 
message. 

Mankind have sat at the feet of masters through 
all time. Five hundred years before Christ, Plato de- 
scribes, in almost the words of Isaiah, him who should 
come and suffer much, and die the death of the cross. 
Plato and Isaiah were inspired by the same thought ; 
that the highest character and power of helping 
comes through the intensest suffering and the deep- 
est degradation. What the great prophets taught in 
Israel, the tragedians taught in Greece. Edward Ever- 
ett Hale, in one of his stories, represents the meeting 
of Homer and David exchanging the scenes of Assyria, 
with the scenes of the siege of Troy, and the sufferings 
of the wandering Ulysses. 

Ideas are born into the world at the same time under 
similar conditions. Leverrier in France and Adams in 
America pointed their telescopes toward the same point 
in the heavens, and simultaneously arrived on the path 
of Neptune. Whenever the time grows full in a nation's 
history, God sends his messenger ; here to the Esquimau 
and there to the Jew ; here to the Greek and there to the 
Hindoo. The same legends are told among the Indians, 



100 THE INNUMERABLE COMPANY. 

the Icelanders and primitive tribes. The student is al- 
ways coming across the same methods and devices. The 
Aryan shepherd, the Scandinavian warrior, the Roman 
soldier, the Roman poet, all knelt and said the same 
prayer, " Our Father." Literature and religion show the 
same great passions and hopes. There is a likeness be- 
tween King Lear bereft of his reason, and CEdipus bereft 
of his sight. The great soul of Cordelia finds a sister in 
the great soul, Antigone. Lady Macbeth stands by the 
side of Clytemnestra, each trying in vain to wash from 
her hands the blood stains, while the waves of the mul- 
titudinous sea grow red. 

Great waves rise on the sea and sweep out over 
the land; and great waves rise over the surface of 
society and sweep over men. The revival of learn- 
ing, religion and art, that swept over Italy and reached 
its culmination in the fifteenth century, also gave the 
reformation to Germany, and made possible the cir- 
cle of Shakespeare, that galaxy of men who make 
illustrious the reign of Elizabeth. The same move- 
ment which made our independence in 1776, gave 
to France a new world in 1789, and swept away the 
whole feudal system of Europe. The revolutions of 
1832 and 1848 were not confined to France, but ex- 
tended to the whole of Europe. 

In the north of Norway, herds of reindeer are feed- 
ing. Suddenly one stops, turns his head to the north, 
sniffs the salt air of the ocean, paws impatiently the 
moss, and then feeds again. This he does many times. 
The next day many other deer stop feeding, lift their 
heads to the north, sniff in the clear fresh air that blows 
from the icebergs and then feed again ; and then the 
Laps know that the great movement is beginning, and 
hastily gather up their belongings and prepare for that 
which is coming. Within two or three days all the 



THE INNUMERABLE COMPANY. 101 

reindeer stop feeding and move slowly toward the north, 
and then more and more rapidly until they disappear in 
the great forests. 

Again and again here and there in the world, some 
man stops beside his plow, stops with his hammer lifted 
from his lap stone, with his needle drawn to the length 
of his thread, stops as he is throwing the shuttle hack 
and forth, and asks, " Why?" and another and another 
asks, "Why?" and there is a revolution. 

To-day there are seven million men under arms, 
facing each other in Europe, waiting until, this king 
or that king sounds the word of onset. Some day 
these men will be hurled against each other. They do 
not know why. Their lives will be lost — always the 
lives of the common people ; their treasures will be ex- 
pended — always the treasure of the common people ; the 
people's homes will be desolate, it is the people that 
have the debt resting upon them ; the people that have 
the burden of taxes increased ; the people that have the 
enjoyments of life lessened; the people that have the 
possibilities of life restricted. Little children will cry 
for their fathers, and wives for their husbands. A truce 
will be patched up, peace will be declared, and a few 
miles of soil will be taken from one country and given 
to another; some millions of dollars of indemnity will 
be paid, which too will be wrung from the people who 
knew nothing of this. But some day not long distant, 
men here and men there, in Russia, in Germany, in 
Italy, in France, will lift their heads and breathe G-od's 
free air, will whisper to each other, " Why ? " and then 
there will be a revolution and a people's movement. 
And when it subsides, you may look over the world 
and not see a king on his throne. Then as the move- 
ment passes away and the smoke clears, you will see 
the United States of Europe — a government of the 
people, by the people, and for the people. 



102 THE INNUMERABLE COMPANY. 

Families become extinct, names are wiped off of the 
peerage of England and out of the memory of man, 
but God's life is always in the world. He never leaves 
himself without a witness. His seven thousand multi- 
plied becomes seventy thousand and seventy million 
that will not kiss the unclean thing, and will not bow 
before a lie. " One man, one vote," says Gladstone, 
Each man counts for one, but for no more than one 
with God. Each of us has a thing to do and a word 
to say, and that thing and that word means something 
in this great whole. Names are lost, names are ob- 
scured. God calls his leaders from cane-brakes and 
tow-paths and charcoal burner's huts, and from King's 
palaces, too. He is no respecter of persons. 

At Marathon, Greek and Persian confronted each 
other determining which civilization, west or east, 
should rule the world. A few Greeks stood up and 
breasted the waves of the barbarians. Every man did 
his manliest. Suddenly there appeared among them a 
man clothed with goat skin and armed with a plow- 
share. Forward through the ranks unshielded he ran 
on and on, plowing his way through those hosts, mak- 
ing a way for the army, and when the deed was done 
they could not find him. He was a nameless man. They 
sent to Delphi to ask what was his name, that they might 
write it on enduring brass that a grateful nation might 
reward him, and the answer said, " Care for no name at 
all, say but just this : ' We praise one helpful, whom we 
call Echetlos, the holder of the plow-share.' " 

God's cause in this world rests on no man. No one 
man dare say, "I have been very jealous, and I alone, 
for the Lord of hosts, and they seek my life ; what will 
become of this world ? " " I am responsible ; I hold 
the truth." But each of us may say, "I am a part ot 
that innumerable company out of every country and 
nation and tongue ; the multiplied forces of God's seven 



THE INNUMERABLE COMPANY. 108 

thousand who have fought, wrought, and suffered for 
the truth, and with robes washed white in much suffer- 
ing have come at last to sing the great triumphal song 
of those who fought. In this great chorus we have 
our part. In this great struggle we have our place to 
occupy and our stroke to strike. In this great march 
we have our place. Names count for nothing, and to 
our egotism God opposes this word : " I have always 
left seven thousand men whose lips have not kissed the 
unclean thing, and whose knees have not bowed to that 
which is false, or unjust, or unkind, or unhelpful. 



May Thy blessing of grace and mercy and peace be 
with us. Strengthen us to do the thing Thou hast set 
us to do. Help us to say the word Thou hast given us 
to say. Each has part and place and use — little child- 
ren, young men and women, men and women in mature 
life and old men and women. Help us to do the thing 
that lies next to us, to do it in courage and in hope. 
We work for the future as well as for to-day ; for 
eternity as well as for time ; for the world as well as 
for ourselves and our children. Weave all our work 
together in our consciousness as one great thing, so 
that we may not say " I " and " my " and " mine," but 
u ours " and " the world's " and " God's." 



THE THINGS WHICH ABIDE. 



, 



THE WATER LILY. 

In the slimy bed of a sluggish mere 

Its root had humble birth, 
And the slender stem that upward grew 
Was coarse of fibre and dull of hue, 

With naught of grace or worth. 

The gelid fish that floated near 

Saw only the vulgar stem. 
The clumsy turtle paddling by, 
The water snake with his lidless eye- 
It was only a weed to them. 

But the butterfly and the honey-bee, 

The sun and sky and air, 
They marked its heart of virgin gold 
In the satin leaves of spotless fold, 

And its odor rich and rare. 

So the fragrant soul in its purity, 

To sordid life tied down, 
May bloom to Heaven, and no man know 
Seeing the coarse, vile stem below, 

How God hath seen the crown. 

— James Jeffrey Eoche. 






THE THINGS WHICH ABIDE. 



"As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear 
the image of the heavenly." 

1 Corinthians, xv., 49. 

O^HIS day is very dear to me ; and, I believe, to the 
4vy membership of this church. So many things 
f u N ^ meet and mingle in it. All ages of life are here 
commemorated. It has an educative value in the great 
central thought that life is something which inheres 
not in the body but in the soul ; a thought which we 
need to bring to ourselves continually, since, confused 
as we are by the noise of daily traffic, and blinded as 
we are by the dust stirred up by our activity, we forget 
that we are souls rather than bodies — spirits, which 
have woven for themselves bodies which they drop, 
when they are lost to sight to live in God. 

For this reason we keep this great Easter festival. 
We would re-emphasize the central thought of life; 
that life is spiritual and not material; that it is our 
souls, not our bodies, which are the significant and 
serious things of life. 

A.nd more than that, it is a day of peculiar pleasure 
and value to us in our church relationships. Every- 
where among all the nobler nations, and among all the 
great historic churches of Christendom, a common con- 
sent has selected certain symbols as feeble expressions 
of spiritual truths and has observed certain services as 



108 THE THINGS WHICH ABIDE. 

significant of them. By some, to-day, little children 
have been brought forward for blessing and dedica- 
tion; and young men and women have come to take 
upon themselves the vow of the Christian life ; and we 
commemorate also those whose memories we hold dear. 
These are some of what we may call the great services 
of the Christian church ; and they touch life at all its 
points, shading at last into the immortal life. 

By this service of christening, we hold this truth 
firm; that children are born of God, first of all. Their 
spiritual birth is a significant thing. Their material 
birth has simply to do with their history here; and 
parents who bring them forward promise to bring them 
up to love God, and his truth, and his Christ, and their 
fellow men ; to dedicate them thus to noble uses and to 
high aims. And certainly we can not do anything 
better to impress upon the minds of the smallest chil- 
dren this fact; that they are God's. They are dedi- 
cated to noble uses and high aims. A stream will not 
run any higher than its source. The fountain rises to 
the level of the spring that feeds it. And the life will 
rise just as high as the thought that inspires it. If there 
are any here, to-day, who believe in the total depravity 
of children, that they go astray as soon as they are 
born, seeking lies, this service, good friends, is not for 
them. The faith of this church is in the spiritual purity 
of children, and that it lies in the power of the State, 
of the Church, of the parents, to see to it that not one 
child shall lose its earthly heritage, or wander or stray 
from the path of rectitude. And it is in that convic- 
tion that we bring little children forward to-day. 

Yet a second thought, is that of confirmation. It 
seems to us natural that those who are dedicated in 
childhood, or those in the growing years of youth 
should take upon themselves a serious vow of life and 
make an earnest promise. !N"o more is implied in this 



THE THINGS WHICH ABIDE. 109 

than is implied in all good manhood and womanhood — 
to pledge themselves sincerely to lead the christian life ; 
to reverence their conscience as the voice of God; to 
speak that which is true; to do that which is just, and 
to do all that lies in their power to alleviate the ignor- 
ance, misery, vice and crime that is in the world. Is 
not this the duty of all ? — and therefore we hold it firm. 
It is the duty of every child to come forward at con- 
scious years and say : " I pledge myself to do these 
things." 

Yet a third symbol and service, is that of baptism. 
In hot, eastern countries, it w T as a natural and refreshing 
thing to cleanse from the body the dust ; and it became 
a natural, simple symbol of the purity which the soul 
had when it took upon itself the vow of the Christian 
life ; when it left behind all old deeds and thoughts and 
ideas, and put on the new deeds and thoughts and 
ideas of Jesus Christ. So the young Roman soldier 
took his vow to be true to his country's eagles. So the 
young knight, at midnight, took the bath, and put on 
a white robe ; and w r as girded with a new sword, and 
knelt, as his king pronounced him a knight, making 
him swear fealty to the kingdom ; to speak no slander, 
no, nor listen to it; to lead a life of purest chastity; 
break down the evil and uphold the Christ. 

Yet a fourth symbol and service with spiritual mean- 
ing, is that of marriage. Marriage is not a mere civic 
rite, it is not solely a physical union. Marriage is 
a spiritual union of like minds, complemental, each 
giving that which he has to the other, they twain be- 
coming one. It is proper that we recognize that it is 
by no voice of man, but it is by the recognition of 
heaven, that men and women are united for the uses, 
services, joys and sorrows of earthly life. 

When life's business is done, and quietness comes to 
the limbs and rest to the mind, then we gather for the 



110 THE THINGS WHICH ABIDE. 

service of burial. Then it is we meet together, we re- 
peat the old and the new words, with voice and aspira- 
tion. We call to God to strengthen us ; we breathe our 
prayers of sympathy and help to those that are stricken ; 
we join hands in a circle of friendship about those that 
are wounded and bruised ; and then we go away. 

Yet another is that of commemoration. We call 
back in memory those who are gone ; retrace the 
lines of their lives ; bring into light the characteristics 
of their natures; value this and remember that; and 
then show — as indeed we know — that they are not 
dead, though they sleep ; and their work is following 
on after them in the influences that remain upon us and 
within us. 

And in the communion of The Lord's Supper we find 
this fact ; that mankind is not simply a struggling 
mass, each trying to be at the front, and treading clown 
his neighbor. But man is a brotherhood, part of the 
great family of God, with mutual helpfulness to ex- 
change ; mutual hope to share ; and mutual memory to 
hold dear. Therefore we sup at the table where com- 
mon bread and wine are spread — simple natural ex- 
pressions of man's dependence upon God ; and therefore 
we join our voices and hearts together in friendship, 
pledging ourselves to help each other if need be, if one 
shall fall into sorrow or pass out by the way. 

So we count the circle of life from birth to death, 
shading off into the hope of the immortal life. And it 
is a very significant fact to me, my friends, that within 
a few days, scarce seven days if I count them aright, I 
shall have married two, and bidden farewell to one 
friend and buried her ; to-day I welcome little children 
and dedicate them to God; confirm the young in their 
splendid purpose to lead a high life; commemorate 
those that have gone ; and then commune, as we shall 



THE THINGS WHICH ABIDE. Ill 

next Sunday morning, in token of this our common 
brotherhood and membership in the great family of 
God. 

And now I wish to call your attention for a very few 
moments to this immortal hope which we hold in com- 
mon. " As we have borne the image of the earthy, so 
we shall bear the image of the heavenly." 

Life is one constant change — birth, growth, decadence 
and death. I seem to stand where a great battle has 
gone on, and the roll-call of those who have been en- 
gaged in it is heard. Here is the line, worn, weak, still 
saying " here" when their names are called. And some, 
we know, are wounded or are sick ; some- are missing, 
and we know not where they are ; and some have gone 
into God's silence. But behind them, pressing up to 
fill the gaps in the files, are those young and strong and 
hopeful. And behind them yet a little further, are those 
now youths, ready to put their feet in the footprints, 
ready to take their places in the ranks. And yet be- 
hind them, the little ones are coming, who, as years go 
on, shall grow strong and able, and shall fill up the gaps 
in the wavering files, and strengthen and steady the 
march. This change in society is one thing that marks 
how a generation comes and a generation goes ; how 
many pass in a year out of our number ; what changes 
take place. 

This same change is upon the face of nature. The 
configuration of the mountains is altered. " Of old," 
said the Psalmist, " Thou hast laid the foundations of 
the earth, and the heavens are the work of Thy hands. 
They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure; they shall 
wax old like a garment ; as a vesture shalt Thou change 
them, and they shall.be changed." But amidst all these 
changes there are some things that do not change ; upon 
which the tooth of time has no corroding power ; which 
the memory of man can not forget nor the hope of man 



112 THE THINGS WHICH ABIDE. 

lose. These are the intense convictions of men as to 
moral distinctions in life ; these are the bright hopes of 
men as to the continuance and development of life ; and 
these are the quenchless affections of the heart, in its 
love for those that are here and those who have gone 
before. These are not the things that change, as they 
are not the things that die. The hopes of the mind, 
the convictions of the conscience, and the loving affec- 
tion of the heart — these are eternal. 

By a .very beautiful insight, you w T ill see in this 
" Nature's Prophecy" which we have here, there are 
many hints and suggestions as to the endurance of spir- 
itual life. Reasoning from analogy is very fascinating, 
but it is not certain or sure. But it certainly is no ac- 
cident, my friends, and no mere coincidence, that scat- 
tered about us are so many hints and signs that the real 
life is not touched by the corrosion of time ; but that 
the real life endures. Is it for nothing, think you, that 
we trace through its slowest development these succes- 
sions of life, these various states and changes of form ? 

The Greek saw it, and gave the same name to the 
butterfly and to the soul — the Psyche, the emerging 
butterfly from the chrysalis, the emerging spirit from 
the body. Consider for a moment : Here is an egg 
laid by a butterfly; certain changes are going on in 
it, and by and by a crawling worm or grub, a caterpil- 
lar, will emerge. It has no memory of its past life, and 
it knows nothing of that which is to come. By and by 
it moves restlessly about, seeking for some leaves, which 
are its appropriate food, spins its cocoon, and then 
is as if it were dead. And w r hen the autumn winds 
have blown the leaves from the tree it sways from a 
pendant tomb, seeming to be but withered leaves itself. 
Then we know in its appointed time this will burst 
apart, and the feeble, fluttering thing will spread its 
wings, a marvel of beauty. 



THE THINGS WHICH ABIDE. 113 

Xow these states of life, or stages of development, 
which this insect has had in its metamorphoses, are as 
singular and wonderful to the scientific student as they 
are delightful to us. Between them great gulfs are 
fixed — between the common or caterpillar life, and 
the butterfly life. One does not seem to give promise 
of the other. One has no memory of the other. Each 
passes through certain phases of change, like that which 
we call death, into a more glorious state. The same 
thing is true in the water-lily. Here is its golden crown 
within its satin folds of virgin beauty. A long stem 
reaches down through the glimmering water, until you 
reach the root, buried in the slime of the river. The 
root life is one thing, the stem life another, the flower 
life yet a third. We know them as parts of a continu- 
ous life, and each as a state. There is no conscious 
memory between them, and no promise ; and yet we do 
know that as each one bears the image and fulfills the 
promise of the life in which it lives, it shall lift itself 
higher and higher, until at last the perfect flower comes. 

It is as if Ood whispered, "As you have borne the 
image of the earthy, you shall bear the image of the 
heavenly." We come into this earth-life knowing 
nothing. Upon the lips of a little child that comes are 
no stories or tales of that which it may have known. 
God's finger presses the lips, and he whispers, " Silence, 
one world at a time." Then follow the years that we 
pass here. We are well fitted to the conditions in 
which. we live. Our bodies are made up of earth's 
elements ; they are formed to bear earth's burdens ; 
they are fitted to do earth's work. Our hearts become 
the home of the affections which make glad the earth. 

There is a close relation between human sympathy 
and human sorrow ; between the experience of one and 
the ignorance of another ; the physician's skill and the 
world's agony; the lawyer's power of disentangling 



114 THE THINGS WHICH ABIDE. 

injustice and the world's need of justice ; the preacher's 
hope and faith and the world's douht and despair. We 
are adapted to this world in which we live. We hear 
its image ; are made of its elements ; feel its weaknesses ; 
know its limitations ; crumble at last to its dust. Our 
will grows strong in trying to do its work and solve its 
problems. Our heart grows tender as we bear the 
burdens of the world. As we bear faithfully this image 
of the earthy in face, figure, heart and mind ; as we 
have been true to the duties which the earth life imposes 
upon us ; we have reason to believe we shall be true to 
the things that lie next beyond us. 

. It is a significant fact, my friends, that we are 
equipped for more in life than life calls for. We have 
more powers than life uses ; we have stronger forces 
than life can use. Not enough of time and not enough 
of space is allotted to us to use the multiform forces 
and the great powers of life. It is as if God had pledged 
us to something that was beyond, and given us these 
things that we have, saying, " This earth is not enough, 
and offers no scope for power and faculty and affections ; 
you are equipped for something more." But here is 
the life that now is, to which we have our relations and 
our duties ; and, as the little children told us no secrets 
of that which is known beyond, the dead come back to 
tell no tales of that which they see and know. The 
finger of God, which rested upon the lips of the child, 
rests now upon the lips of the dead; and the voice 
which said, " Silence ; one world at a time is enough," 
to a babe, says the same thing to the happy dead. One 
world at a time. Here we have our duties ; we must 
not neglect them. Here are our burdens ; we must not 
shake them off. Here are our cares ; we must assume 
them. Here are our sorrows ; we must bear them. 
Here are our sympathies ; we must employ them. Here 



THE THINGS WHICH ABIDE. 115 

are our tears; we must shed them. One world at a 
time is enough. 

And yet, emerging all the while are these intense 
affections, these unquenchable hopes, these deathless 
loves, that whisper to us, " You are more than life calls 
for here ; life is hut a stage in development ; life is but 
a state or condition through which you pass ; and as 
you have borne the image of the earthy faithfully, you 
shall bear the image of the heavenly gladly." 

The image of the heavenly ! "We know not what it 
is, and we may not ask. It is enough for us to know 
that eye hath not seen nor ear heard, nor hath it entered 
into the heart of man to conceive, the things that God 
hath prepared for those that love him. It is enough 
for us to know that the sufferings and endeavors of this 
present life are not worthy to be compared to the glory 
that shall be revealed to us. 

It shall come — the "Kingdom of God" which Jesus 
loved and longed for and planted; the "Republic" 
Plato foresaw ; the strange, beautiful " City of the 
Sun " of which Campanelli dreamed ; the " Utopia " of 
which Moore wrote ; Philip Sidney's "Arcadia ; " 
and Augustine's " City of God." These are but the 
finely pure conditions of life, in which faith and hope 
and love may employ their utmost powers ; and as we 
have borne the image of the earthy faithfully and truly, 
we shall bear the image of the heavenly gloriously and 
joyously. 



THE PIETY OF THE INTELLECT. 



. 



118 THE PIETY OF THE INTELLECT. 



Our Father, we know not what we should pray for 
as we ought. We are like little children, whose capri- 
cious questions and desires continually obtrude into the 
wisdom and love of fathers and mothers. Teach us, 
O God, and lead us by wise hands to the perfect life. 
So we rest in Thee. May comfort come this morning 
to those that are of sorrowful heart, and peace to those 
that are troubled, and a sense of friendship in this great 
house of God to those that are lonely; a welcome to 
the stranger, and sweet, clustering memories of past 
times to those to whom the present is sorrowful and 
dark ; bright hopes, always standing at the threshold, 
winning the children and youth on and on. 

Oh, Thou wilt keep Thy promise with us, the prom- 
ise of the better and larger life, and no one shall lose 
his way. It is a long path to that perfect life, from 
one's own house to the house of God, and it may be 
many shall fall and many shall stray, but at last we 
shall come, not one missing, to the house of God and 
the enjoyment of the perfect life. Our pity and our 
sympathy is for the ignorance of those who know not 
the way to God; it is for those that, are broken and 
troubled, those that are debarred by human weakness 
and ignorance and selfishness from their share in life. 
We would fain that all might share in the bounty and 
beauty of God, and it is for us to cooperate with Thee 
and see that no one, through our neglect or selfishness, 
lacks the share he might have had. It lies in the power 
of the weak, ignorant and selfish to obstruct the devel- 
opment of a little child's mind and to check the out- 
flowing forces of some man's thought and heart. Oh, 



THE PIETY OF THE INTELLECT. 119 

help us wisely to order our own life and the laws of 
the land, so that each may have his chance in this great 
opportunity of God. May thy blessing be upon our 
word and may the weight of the word sink by its force 
into every heart. Give it the power of a seed, that it 
bring forth its result in stronger thought and clearer 
vision. And let us know that al] truth is good; that 
truth is truth since God is God ; that there is a piety 
of the intellect, as there is a piety of the affection, and 
a piety of the conscience. Let us welcome everything 
that comes and seek to adjust it to our previous con- 
ceptions and traditional beliefs, and all these things 
shall find their place at last, inasmuch as they are but 
syllables of the great unspeakable word which we try 
to call God and can not yet speak. 

Now, may the peace of God come to all, blessing all 
with joy and happiness and pleasant thoughts, through 
Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. 



THE PIETY OF THE INTELLECT. 

" Who covered thyself with light as icith a garment." 
Psalm civ, 2. 

/l^^IGHT which seems to us that which reveals 
£j]rj/ things, is also a golden cloud which hides things. 
^Q- The poet, Gray, speaks of one who was blinded 
by too much light. It is told of Newton, the philoso- 
pher, that trying to look at the sun he nearly blinded 
himself, and practically ruined his sight for many 
months. Light is good, but it is not in the light that 
we see the stars. The light of the sun is bright, but 
it is only on the occasion of eclipses that men can 
study the sun. The light of the sun covers it as with a 
garment. It lets drop a golden veil between its glory 
and the eyes of man. 

When, on the occasion of a total eclipse, all the 
scientific societies of the world, enriched and aided by 
governmental appropriations, go here or there, to the 
South, the West, or the East, they are finding the place 
most favorable to study the sun when its light is dark- 
ened. Our American astronomers went to Japan some 
time ago, in order that they might see the sun when 
the veil of darkness was substituted for the veil of 
light. 

Sometimes, therefore, we can see there is trouble in 
having too much light. Having too many things about 
us is a certain confusion to the intellect. It can not 



122 THE PIETY OF THE INTELLECT. 

study so many things at once. It asks for the soft 
twilight, for mist, and for mystery, that in these it may 
study the beginnings of things. The day is sometimes 
called the garish day. And out in the great light 
many things of God are not known because we are 
blinded by excess of light. 

The statement has been made that while mathemati- 
cians are naturally reverent, and believers in God, and 
the great truths of religion, on the other hand physi- 
cians and men of science generally are not reverent, 
and are unbelievers, or disbelievers in God. Such a 
statement I had supposed was almost out of date. I 
seemed to be carried back two or three hundred years 
to the time when the term was current that " Wherever 
there are three physicians there are two atheists." 
The great discoveries in medicine that have made the 
world glad, and extended life, and expanded life's en- 
joyments, every one of them was greeted by somebody 
with the statement that it profaned some mystery, or 
set aside some law of God. They who did it were 
called sorcerers, or said to be in league with the devil, 
if they were chemists. They were considered infidels 
or atheists if they were astronomers. There lingers on 
the survival of the old fear that the intellect is by the 
very nature of its workings destructive of religious 
faith, and that they who take it up move toward 
uncertainty and doubt and positive disbelief. 

Shall we pass by all these great secrets of God ? Do 
they tend toward infidelity ? 1 am here to aifirm and to 
maintain the deep and essential piety of the intellect. 
I take the positive ground. 

There are three characteristics of the higher life. 
They are strength, sweetness and light. Strength, or 
the power to do and to suffer for the right ; sweetness, 
or the affection or goodness of the heart ; and light, or 
the love of knowledge and the search for it. I think 



THE PIETY OF THE INTELLECT. 123 

we will all agree that these are characteristics of the 
higher life. Now strength and sweetness and light, 
are the out-working or expression of three powers or 
faculties that are within us, the conscience, the heart 
and the intellect. Of the conscience or the moral 
sense, with its recognition of the distinction "between 
right and wrong, and its sense of obligation, we may 
well predicate strength ; strength to do right ; strength 
patiently to wait for the coming of right, or to suffer 
the results of doing right. And of the heart we may 
predicate goodness, all the warm outflowing affections 
of the home and friendship ; pity for suffering and sym- 
pathy with all pain. And then the intellect is the organ 
of knowledge. 

Now over against these three powers or faculties, 
there are three words current and common. The word 
Right is that which we always associate with the con- 
science, the word Truth we associate with intellect, and 
the word Goodness or Love we associate with the heart ; 
three qualities of life, Strength, Sweetness and Light ; 
three powers of faculties, the Conscience, the Heart and 
the Intellect ; three great inspiring words, Right, Truth 
and Goodness. And there is one word which is appro- 
priate and is applied to all three in reference to a cer- 
tain relation they all bear to one great central object 
and idea, and that is Duty. It is that which the con- 
science owes to the great law of right, which the heart 
owes to the great law of good, and which the intellect 
owes to the great center of truth. 

Religion is not a thing but it is an attitude. Religion 
does not stand off by itself, but includes the heart, the 
intellect and the conscience. Religion is the attitude 
in which the conscience stands toward duty, toward 
goodness, toward truth. It is certainly a misuse of 
terms to say that there could be any conflict between 



124 THE PIETY OF THE INTELLECT. 

intellect and religion ; or between the results of intel- 
lectual action in science, medicine, art, and religion. 
You can not make a conflict between the intellect and 
the attitude of the intellect ; but you may make certain 
conflicts between the statement of the mind at one time 
and the statement of the mind at another time. 

Every thought as it comes into the world comes armed 
like Minerva from the head of Jove ; comes radical, 
destructive, forming and reforming, tearing down and 
reshaping. Every other thought of the world at once 
sets itself in opposition to it; because when a thought 
has been in the world a few years it has got some 
priest, or politician, or scientific man who is espous- 
ing it, who has thought it out and made it his own. 
It has gathered some property around it, and vested 
rights, and interests, which it must conserve and 
defend. By and by this new thought which fought 
its way into the world takes its place among the con- 
servative forces, and looks askance at every newer 
thought, and says, " Advance and give the counter- 
sign." It assumes that it is an enemy, not recognizing 
the friend in the new thought. 

The conflict is between the thought of one age, which 
has become conservative with its vested interests and 
rights, and the new radical destructive thought, as it 
seems to be, which is coming in and demands a hearing. 
This adjustment is called the conflict between thought 
and thought ; or as it is very readily, but mistakenly 
called, the conflict between science and religion. There 
has been a long struggle. Every thought has had to 
fight its way into the world. The struggle is not sim- 
ply in the field of thought, it is in the field of nature. 
Give an account of yourself, why you are here, establish 
your relation with other things, show that you are good 
and true. That is the greeting which men have for 
things and things for men. 



THE PIETY OF THE INTELLECT. 125 

President Andrew D. White, of Cornell University, 
says : " In all modern history interference with science 
in the supposed interest of religion, no matter how 
conscientious that interference may have been, has 
resulted in the direst evils, both to science and religion ; 
and invariably, on the other hand, all the untrammeled 
scientific investigation, no matter how dangerous some 
of its statements may have seemed for the time being, 
has invariably resulted in the highest good to science 
and religion." Let me simply speak of a few of these 
to show you the struggles thoughts have had in the 
world. For example, the theory that the earth is round 
had to fight its way, and they who maintained it did so 
at the cost of blood and imprisonment, until in 1519 
Magellan circumnavigated the earth, returning to the 
port whence he started, showing that the earth was 
round and not fiat. 

So, again, the position of the earth among the 
heavenly bodies had to fight its way. Copernicus, for 
laying down the laws of the planetary system, was 
imprisoned, and his book was not published until after 
his death. Bruno was burned in the open streets of 
Rome. Galileo was imprisoned by the inquisition. 
Descartes was stopped in his attempt to write a treatise 
of the world, and was practically banished from the 
court of Sweden. Kepler, "thinking God's thoughts 
after him," met with the same fate of obloquy and 
imprisonment. Even as late as 1859, when Alexander 
von Humboldt died, at that great funeral to which the 
kings of the world sent their representatives, there were 
present but the officiating clergymen and two or three 
other clergymen, who were not orthodox, so great was 
the fear as to the results of his investigation. The 
nebular hypothesis is now established, that out of the 
dust of stars by the impact of great forces there has 
come this great varied order of planetary and stellar 



126 THE PIETY OF THE INTELLECT. 

system. This, first hinted at by Bruno, who was burned 
for it, afterwards laid down by Immanual Kant, and 
then established by La Place, fought its way up through 
these same great oppositions. 

Roger Bacon, one of the greatest minds the world has 
ever known, great in mechanics and in chemistry, was 
fourteen years in prison, until death released him, for 
daring to maintain his thought and to study into the se- 
crets of God. He had just about discovered that which 
to-day we are come into full possession of, the fact that 
typhus and scarlet fever and all the zymotic diseases are 
preventable by sanitary measures, and by inoculation or 
vaccination may be controlled. Therefore, because of 
the ignorance of man three hundred years ago, this world 
has been devastated by all the terrible diseases that might 
have been checked by the more welcome reception of this 
great truth. So, as they used against the astronomers 
as weapons the words infidel and atheist,, they used 
against the chemist the word sorcerer, a man in league 
with the devil. Petrarch, the poet, said that the 
physicians denied Genesis and barked at Christ. 

Take the story of Yesalius, who founded modern 
anatomy, and whose statue is to be seen in the streets of 
Brussels. The dissection of dead bodies was forbidden 
by law, and it was only in secret that he could do it. 
He prowled around hospitals and haunted graveyards, 
and especially in the time of those great epidemics he 
tried to get a body, that he might wring forth the secret 
of deliverance from that terrible black death. A picture 
has been painted which shows you the man in his cell, 
the door of which is bolted and barred, which tells us 
how necessary it was for him to protect himself against 
attack. Above him is a crucifix, to which he lifts his 
pleading eye, and stretched before him is the livid body 
of one dead of the plague, into which he is about to 
sink his knife, in the hope of finding, as he did find, the 



THE PIETY OF THE INTELLECT. 



127 



secret of this dread disease. Then, writing down on 
paper the results of his investigations and leaving them 
in vinegar that they might he disinfected, he went out 
from there a despised and hunted man, for whom even 
the powerful protection of Charles V. scarcely availed, 
and whom the narrow superstition of Philip II. delivered 
over to his tormentors. He died on a pilgrimage to 
Jerusalem. 

In 1795, when Boyer discovered the principle of 
inoculation which was adopted hy Jenner, it was 
met by the statement that diseases were sent as a 
punishment, and whoever interferes with them breaks 
God's command and is God's enemy. In 1798 Jenner 
introduced vaccination and was denounced as bidding 
defiance even to the will of God. How strange this 
sounds to us. In 1847 Sir James Young Simpson first 
applied anesthetics in obstetric cases, and the charge 
was brought upon him that he was breaking the ancient 
law of God, "In sorrow thou shalt bring forth chil- 
dren." The wise and witty physician said when God 
performed the first surgical operation of taking the rib 
from Adam he caused a deep sleep to fall upon him, 
and he thought a great physician could cause a deep 
sleep to fall upon a patient without doing violence to 
God's law. 

It was only when the thundering voice of Thomas 
Chalmers sounded through Scotland that these religious 
criticisms grew more and more silent and at last were 
not heard. The fear still lingers among some good 
people that God's great beacon of the intellect in man 
tracing the paths of the stars and watching the stately 
steppings in creation has something dangerous in it. 

And now turning from this, let me ask you to con- 
sider the essential and deep piety of the intellect. 
First, in its reverential silence on things it does not 



128 THE PIETY OF THE INTELLECT. 

know or is not yet ready to pronounce upon. Silence 
is as good as sound to God. He does not need the 
spoken word. " God has kept silence," says Kepler, 
" six thousand years about this secret of planetary mo- 
tion." I can wait centuries until man shall understand 
the meaning of this which I speak. We shall know as 
we need to know. Man's silence, his daring to say, "I 
do not know," is not disbelief, is not unbelief — it is rev- 
erence. The true scientific spirit says of many things, 
" I do not know." It says, " The time has not yet come 
to affirm," but says, " This lies outside the range of the 
instruments we have to use in study." " Agnosco," I 
do not know. That is not a term of reproach. That 
is not a proud word in which one wraps himself and 
says, " I have no interest in these things." It is simply 
the reverent attitude of the intellect — I do not know. 

Mr. Reed said that in olden time they usually abused 
the Catholics and talked about the scarlet woman as if 
she had gone to the same district school with them. 
And Matthew Arnold says some men talk of God as 
though he were a man in the next street. Who 
knoweth the eternal plan ? Who dares set metes and 
bounds to the infinite God that is over us ? " Keep 
silence," says The Word. " Be still and know that I 
am God," in the presence of these great truths and 
mysteries just coming up above the horizon. Who 
dare affirm or mark out and weigh and measure and 
tell us how many souls shall be saved by God out of 
the infinite multitude that for countless years have been 
passing like a river dropping over into death? 

The reverent spirit simply says, I do not know. Asked 
to describe God, it says, I do not know. An unknown 
force, an unmeasured power, plays about things; we 
see the stream of tendency by which all things fulfill 
the law of their being. It says, with Goethe : 



THE PIETY OF THE INTELLECT. 



129 



" Who dares to name His name, 
Or belief in Him proclaim, 
Clothed in mystery as He is, 

The All-infolder? 
Gleams across the soul His light, 
Feels the trembling soul His might, 
Who then dares deny His right, 

The All-upholder?" 

And as it is true that we dare not affirm, but rever- 
ently say, T do not know, so, on the other hand, the true 
scientific spirit rebukes those who affirm that nothing 
can be known. That is not the scientific spirit which 
says, This is all ; we have laid bare with our scalpel 
layer after layer of brain substance, and have found 
no soul — there is no soul. That is not the scientific 
spirit which says, We have gone down with the micro- 
scope closer and closer into the very beginning of things ; 
we see no need of God; everything is spontaneous. 
The scientific spirit is reverential, silent, about things 
it can not know. There are things beyond, it says, 
which we can not know and can not measure now. 
We do not affirm. I call this the piety of the intellect, 
that it does not assume to know all about God as it 
does about a man in the next street; that it leaves 
something to be found out by the ages to come ; and 
believes that the Infinite can not be encompassed and 
confined in the finite. 

The next great and inspiring idea which gives to the 
intellect its essentially reverent and pious character is 
its revelation of order in this universe. It is a great 
matter that things are not confused. There is no com- 
fort in a room where there is confusion, where chairs 
are in the middle of the room, books on the floor, dust 
on the mantel, everything scattered about. An or- 
derly spirit comes in and puts things in their places, 
and then we sit and enjoy ourselves. We do not know 



130 THE PIETY OF THE INTELLECT. 

how much we enjoy the comfort of our homes because 
of the orderly spirit of the good wife that is there. 
Here is a confused business, and a confused business is 
on its way to a bankrupt business always. The affairs 
of a railroad may be in disorder, and a master mind 
comes in. Soon there is order in this road, everything 
in its place, every man in his place, and knowing why 
he is there. Now, science comes into this world with 
its principle of order ; it explains to us what things are 
and what class they should occupy. 

I go to Europe, and feel, perhaps, at first that I can 
not live there ; but I ask, as an intelligent man, what 
are the laws of this country, and what is its govern- 
ment? What are my duties and my privileges here? 
So I establish myself in quiet relations. A man comes 
into this world and he says, I am a stranger, God, in 
this world; lead me into the knowledge of thy com- 
mandments. And the intellect all at once begins to 
say, this is the law about ferns, this about crystals, this 
about men and women ; and by and by, life is ordered 
and beautiful, as things play into each other and co- 
operate in their work. This reverential principle of 
order goes with quiet and noiseless step, putting things 
in their places, removing obstructions from our path, 
brushing away the dust so fraught with possible dis- 
ease. Is it not a great idea which makes of the intel- 
lect, one of God's messengers and instruments, the 
principle of order? 

Let me add yet one more thought, and that is this, 
the principle of progress. Things change, but they 
change according to a purpose. A great idea domi- 
nates them. From step to step, the Infinite Power 
moves, and as he moves there is beauty around ; and 
through this progress we reach perfection. It is sci- 
ence that tells us all the while God's idea is per- 
fect. It is science that continually reveals to us that 



THE PIETY OF THE INTELLECT* 131 

God will not be satisfied until tjae perfect is reached. 
It shows us the incomplete world, a world in the mak- 
ing, everything just begun, not finished. So, it puts its 
idea of incompleteness over against the old thought 
of a world that has fallen from some estate, and says, 
this is the truer thought. No fallen world, but an 
incomplete world, a world moving on toward more 
beauty, more truth, more happiness, more happy men 
and women, better laws, better churches, everything 
better. 

" Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the 
suns." 

It tells us of the one unseen event towards which the 
whole creation moves. 

These are the great inspiring ideas of the modern 
thought, that give to the intellect its essentially pious 
character. Will any one then tell me that the tendency 
of an intellect which is silent and reverential, which is 
revealing to us all the while deeper and deeper things 
about the God we worship, which is showing us the 
principle of order, and assisting us to adjust our lives 
with less friction and less pain is atheistic ? That the 
intellect which shows us the purpose in creation and the 
place which each thing occupies, the progress in cre- 
ation from simple to complex, from coarse to fine, from 
ugly to beautiful, from ignorance to knowledge, and at 
last continually shows us the perfect, the perfect gov- 
ernment, the perfect State, the perfect church, the per- 
fect school, the perfect thought, the perfect body — will 
any one tell me that that has anything infidel or dan- 
gerous in its tendencies ? 

Or let me turn this thought again and say this, as 
I close : There is a temper of the intellect which 
gives it its essentially pious character. The temper is 



132 THE PIETY OP THE INTELLECT. 

the atmosphere in which ideas work. In religion it is 
Faith, Hope and Love. What is it in science? Where 
do we get our deep convictions of the enduring laws of 
God? Where do we get our thought that we can plant 
to-day and reap to morrow? How dare a farmer put 
his seed beneath the sod and wait for it to push away 
the clod? How dare a man send his ships across the 
water, thinking they will come back again ? Science 
gives us our deep, unalterable conviction that the laws 
of God will not fail us ; that the Creator will not play 
fast and loose with us ; that two and two are always 
four. I lift the water to my lips which quenches my 
thirst ; it never occurs to me to doubt that his ancient 
formula God keeps true, and that the very chemical 
elements that entered into the water that slaked the 
thirst of Adam are those that are in the water that 
slakes my thirst. Such deep convictions I have. It is 
the temper of the scientific spirit. This is the pious 
attitude toward things. It believes in these things. 
Its convictions are deep ; its trusts and confidences are 
not shaken. Or hope — what is it that bids us hope ? 
What is it that leads us to overcome depression, to 
gather up the scattered forces again? What is it that 
helps us to readjust ourselves when we make a mistake? 
It is hope. Science tells us continually the new thing 
that is coming. Try again, all things are possible; and 
we go on and on, and recall life and light and hope 
again. 

Then if we ask is there any loving thought in the 
scientific spirit, we question, what makes love? First, 
devotion to the idea, counting it above the cost of the 
work. For the most part, all men of science and phy- 
sicians are poor men. They are men who do not seek 
to make fortunes. The greatest physician in all this 
world, the most skillful, the most renowned, can not 
make in all his life, perhaps, so much money as a great 



THE PIETY OF THE INTELLECT. 133 

magnate of a railroad can make in a year. That is not 
what he is after. He is pledged to a sacred vow. God 
has chosen him to eradicate disease, to bring comfort 
where is sorrow, and ease where is pain. No where do 
you find that men of science or physicians are rich 
men; nor are they men that are primarily seeking 
money. No honorable man does, but, like the ascetics 
of old, they pledge themselves by a vow to compara- 
tive poverty. I do not mean wearing poor clothes 
always ; but I do mean they have taken practically the 
vow of poverty. They have forgone the rewards of 
the world which are offered to the great captains of 
industry or the great railroad workers. 

Faraday laid the foundation of modern electricity. 
Tyndall tells of him that all that come after him, as 
they go into the held of electricity, can only glean a 
little here and there which he has left scattered behind 
him. It was Faraday who said, when asked to be the 
chemist of a great corporation, " Science is not a cow 
to be milked ; science is a sovereign mistress whose 
behests and commands one obeys to seek the truth." 
It was Agassiz who said, when offered one thousand 
dollars a night for lectures, "I have not time to make 
money." lie does not despise the money, only he has 
just so much time in this world and there are a great 
many things that he must do and know; he has no 
time to lecture and prepare for it when there are so 
many secrets just trembling on the lips of God for him 
to read. Again and again you find this devotion. It 
is an essential element of piety. The vow of poverty 
is on the man of science. 

"Will you take this self-sacrifice as have so many mar- 
tyrs ? They shall come before us : Kepler from his 
prison, Galileo loaded down with chains, Copernicus 
dying just as the sheets of his book are ready to be 
published, Bruno dying at the stake and Roger Bacon 



134 THE PIETY OF THE INTELLECT. 

dying in prison — these, and many another, are martyrs 
of science to whom self-sacrifice was a duty. We look 
upon self-sacrifice as being the one great mark of the 
religious spirit. Here are these — counting no cost, ask- 
ing no wages, seeking no reward, demanding no ap- 
proval ; simply the privilege of going on and working. 
And with what wages have they been paid ! Talk of 
the martyrs of early Christian time — of Joan of Arc, 
St. Agnes, St. Catherine and St. Elizabeth. We are 
glad that they lived; but we talk of Bruno, Bacon, 
Kepler, Jenner, Priestly, Aggassiz, Faraday, Tyndall, 
and Spencer — men who cared nothing for life except 
as it is this devotion to God's truth. Should not they 
also be apotheosized ? 

And now if we measure by helpfulness, what has it 
not done, dear friends, to make life glad, soothe its 
sorrow, quiet its pulse of pain, enlarge life for many ? 
Measured by every test, then we may maintain the 
essential piety of the intellect. Who clothest himself 
with light as with a garment. We see a little way and 
know a little. We build our systems which are not 
worth the mortar it took to put them together, because 
we must tear them down. " We have but faith, we can 
not know, for knowledge is of things we see, " but 
knowledge grows from more to more with each day, 
and as one after another the truths of God swing into 
the field of a man's vision he finds they bear a practical 
relation to his daily life. " The Lord is wonderful in 
council and mighty in his working." We may bring 
all these varied products and trophies of the intellect 
and say they are God's contribution for the helpfulness 
of man. They have been searched for and found by 
men who vowed themselves, in a pure spirit of religion, 
to search the secrets of God and wring them mightily 
forth. 



THE NEW VOW OF POVERTY. 



136 THE NEW VOW OF POVERTY. 



Teach us to pray, and reveal to us our wants Let it 
be not the mere service of the lip and the formal word, 
the bowed head and the accustomed act, but the real, 
serious search for Thee, the consciousness of thy pres- 
ence, the interpretation of the better thoughts that have 
come into our minds, the easier and more rested heart 
which we feel here. For, indeed, we have felt in this 
Presence as if the burden had fallen, the sky had cleared 
and the loneliness had become peopled with familiar 
and kindly forms ; the very silence has become vocal to 
us, and memories have gathered and hopes have bright- 
ened; and in these little hints and suggestions we read 
that the invisible are here. Our finer feeling which we 
call faith, our imagination, the sensitive plate upon 
which the unseen visions itself, at all times, tells us of 
this Presence. If we but sit in the silence and hush, 
join the song, or breathe the prayer, we shall go away 
rested and our work will be easier for us. 

We come out of the experiences of life, some strong, 
and confident and successful — what do they seek ? Some 
weak, and worn, and tired — w T hat do they seek? And 
little children — what do they seek? The young and 
hopeful, and those looking back over long memories — 
what do they ask? We all come to Thee, asking for 
life. Life is many things. It is not one thing. It is 
the sense of strength to weakness, it is music to those 
who hunger for harmony, it is beauty to those who long 
for that, it is comfort to those that sorrow, and joy to 
those that mourn. Life is whatever we lack of com- 
pleting the fullness of joy within us. We feel that we 
are born to it; it is ours by divine right. Thou hast 
promised it to us by the hopes that we have. If life 



THE NEW VOW OF POVERTY. 137 

were not ours, no hope and no expectation would be 
here. The dull clod is insensitive to all the promise of 
the great future of the world, and the stone is cold to 
the impressions of thy light and of thy joy which is 
coming. But our longing and our joy tell us that 
what we long for and what we wish is ours by right. 
We can not interpret it aright, but thy thought is our 
conviction. 

So we long for life. Give it to us as Thou seest we need. 
We have to interpret the capricious wish and faulty 
word of our own children and give them what we think 
they need. Thou, all-wise, all-loving, must interpret 
our wish and want and give us what we need. Oh, save 
us from losing our time and strength in trying to gather 
the fruit and the flower of that which is not beautiful 
and that which is not helpful, missing so much of the 
true joy and fullness of life in seeking things that are 
unsatisfactory when we have them. We catch the but- 
terfly, but there is no longer the golden glory upon its 
wing. We reach for the fruit which seems so luscious, 
but is to us perhaps a bitterness when we get it. 

Teach us to know what the true wealth of life is, 
what is our place, our use and the method of our life. 
Then there shall come to us, as there comes to all, joy. 
Joy belongs to our life, is the inheritance of all. The 
meanest little child shall have all of life that the king's 
son and the philosopher's child can ever have. It is 
merely a question of time. At some time, every soul 
shall round itself out to completeness. The little trem- 
bling drop of dew upon a leaf, the fallen tear upon 
the hand, globe themselves into a perfect circle, and the 
great ocean and the earth can do no more than that. 
A little soul, as it seems to us, shall round itself out to 
God's fullness, and the greatest soul can do no more. 
We plod along, we grope, we gather dust and chaff, we 
have a hope, we dimly see. All this shall disappear as 



138 



THE NEW VOW OF POVERTY. 



the light breaks and the truth comes. Thy truth shall 
make us free. And now let peace come to all those that 
are here, and streugth, and joy and comfort; a quiet 
heart, and mind at peace with itself, the central peace 
subsisting at the heart of endless agitation, through 
Jesus Christ. Amen. 




THE NEW VOW OF POVERTY. 



4 ' One thing thou lackest : go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and 
give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven : and come, 
take up the cross, and follow me" 

Mark x, 21. 

HIS story of the young man who was not satis- 
fied, made a profound impression upon the im- 
^^v aginations of Hawthorne and of Dante. In his 
Roman journal, Hawthorne, who had long brooded 
over it, says, it has in it the possibilities of a great 
story in trying to follow and speculate upon the future 
fortunes of the young man who went away sorrowful 
because the requirements of Jesus were too much for 
him. It also made its impression upon the deep and 
somber imagination of Dante, for on the outskirts of 
hell, he says he saw as a part of a company driven by 
an invisible wind here and there and following a falter- 
ing, uncertain flag, the shade of him who made, through 
cowardice, the great refusal. 

A few words with regard to the story itself. It is 
the story of a young man in that part of Palestine 
lying to the east of Jordan, known as Edom ; a land of 
rolling hills and broad meadows on which great herds 
of cattle grazed; and a land studded here and there 
with castles of rich and powerful men called dukes of 
Edom. Of these dukes this young man was one, living 



140 THE NEW VOW OF POVERTY. 

in his castle surrounded by all that wealth and in- 
herited power could give him. As Jesus passed through 
this region he caught the attention of this young man, 
who, running and falling down before him in his haste, 
worshipped him, saying: " Good Master, what shall I 
do that I may inherit eternal life? " Perhaps half sup- 
posing that he was one of those curious questioners 
who so often met him, Jesus says : " Thou knowest 
the commandments, the external requirements of your 
law — do not kill ; do not steal ; do not commit adult- 
ery ; do not bear false witness ; do not defraud ; honor 
thy father and thy mother" — but he pushes them aside 
impatiently, saying: "All these have I kept from my 
youth up. What lack I yet? 

Now, it is evident that here is a man beyond the 
ordinary. Here is no simple, careless, curious ques- 
tioner of a wise man. Here is a heart that is breaking ; 
here is a mind that is laboring with that most serious 
question that can ever be asked — How can I live? 
And then Jesus looking upon him and reading his 
heart, loved him, and said: Do you really want life? 
You lack one thing; " Go, sell all that thou hast and 
give to the poor, and come, take up the cross and fol- 
low me, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven." It 
was a severe requirement. I do not know whether it 
was a test as to his earnestness, or whether it was ab- 
solutely the only way at that time in which a man 
could be a follower of Christ. The times were bad. 
There were hungering, crying, oppressed people every- 
where. Wealth could hardly reach their sorrow. All 
this man could give would only furnish a few mouth- 
fuls of bread to those who lacked so much. It may be 
it was needed. Perhaps it was simply a test. It mat- 
ters not; it was too hard for him, and he went away 
sorrowful, for he was very rich. And then Jesus 



THE NEW \0V< OF POVERTY. 141 

r him with that lingering, disappoint 
longing look of oi i had thought he had found a 

man. a man alter vn heart, and said : M How 

hardly shall they that have ric :ter into the kii _- 

dom of God.* 8 And the disciples, with that wonder 
which ignorant people always have of great wealth. - 
if it outfht to buy its wav into heaven as well as to anv 
pla honor in the world, looked at him question- 

ingly and said: " ^Vho. then, can be saved, if the rich 
can aot enter into the kingdom?" Children, he - ""-. 
with what difficulty shall they that trust in rich - 
enter into the kingdom of God; into the sweetness of 
human companionship; into the consciousness of 
the community of human fellowships. How har- 

d they that have riches enter in ! It is easier for a 
camel, as it goes into Jerusalem after the gate* 

sed, to go through the Xeedle"s Eye. the little door 
in the gate, than it is for a rich man. trusting in rich-, 
to enter into the kingdom of God. For a camel must 
needs have taken from it everv single sack of corn and 
hale of merchandise, and then it can hardly enter. And 
it is onlv by leaving the things that these men have 
trusted in that they can get into the kingdom of heaven. 
And now we are to study this requirement. TThat 
does it mean ? It would seem to mean on its face that 
if you would be a Christian, if you would be a true 
follower of Jesus, vou must sell all vou have and give 
to the poor, and lead a life of poverty, take upon you 
the vow of poverty. And, indeed, that has been the 
thought of the Christian church, or some portions of 
it. There is a picture by Giotto, in the Church of As- 
: . representing St. Francis, the founder of the Fran- 
iscan monks, taking the vow of poverty. A girl of 
beauty, but of poor dress, is there espousing this Saint 
of the Church. St. Francis said that they who follow 
Jesus most closely must take upon them the vow of 



142 THE NEW VOW OF POVERTY. 

poverty ; must marry poverty ; have no other wife than 
she ; devote themselves to her. And Dante, in interpret- 
ing this same picture of Q-iotto's shows how this girl 
comes and weds St. Francis, of Assisi ; and the Church 
believed and preached that the perfect Christian life 
was only possible in its renunciation of riches ; in its 
denuding itself of all accumulations of wealth and 
taking the vow of poverty. And while it did not im- 
pose this as a duty upon all, because it was said only a 
few are fit for it and worthy of it, yet it lifted it high 
as being a desirable thing, that one should forego all 
pleasures, and relinquish all wealth, and take upon him- 
self the vow of poverty. 

And this same thought has come down all along the 
years of Christendom into our Protestant Churches. 
There is a feeling in the world that riches and wealth 
are the devil's net by which he entangles men's souls, 
and that the highest life is to be found among the poor. 
" Of poor but honest parents," we say ; and we think 
of the virtues that make their home in a cottage; and 
we pass by the palaces and the homes of the wealthy 
as if they did not enter there. There lingers a certain 
feeling, a sentiment if you please, a superstition some 
may say, that somehow Christianity and comfort, Chris- 
tianity and wealth — whatever the word may mean, for 
it is a relative word — are not related. 

And now I wish to ask this question this morning : 
Does this word of Jesus mean the relinquishment of 
wealth? Does it mean the renunciation of riches? 
Does it require, as the indication of the higher life, that 
one sell all that he has and give to the poor? Does it 
make riches a crime? Are we to say that riches are a 
net spread before the feet of men ; that riches cultivate 
the grosser powers and faculties ; that the}^ are the fer- 
tile soil which nourishes the loathsome weed and the 



THE NEW VOW OF POVERTY. 143 

poisonous plant ? Shall we say wealth is wrong, wrong 
in the eye of the w r orld, wrong in the eye of religion ? . 

If we were buying a farm, what would we do ? Would 
we choose a barren soil, a soil where there is only sor- 
rel growing, the lower, coarser forms of weeds, out of 
which the rock obtrudes itself? No, a sterile ground 
produces no fruit, no wheat. There may be things it 
will produce, but it does not nourish and sustain life. 
Young men leave the sterile farms of New England and 
come West to the valley of the Mississippi, or the 
plains that lie west of the Mississippi, where the earth 
is black and rich, and the seed, put into it, brings forth 
its many fold of wheat, corn, barley, or fruit. We want 
rich soil, do we not, to nourish strong, successful and 
prosperous men ? No farmer takes poor soil when he 
can buy rich soil. No agriculturist would say that the 
possibilities of a prosperous country lie in a desert, or 
in a narrow gorge, or on the top of a rock. Not at all. 
Where rich soil is, there the seed brings forth its pos- 
sible powers. There the corn will grow high, the wheat 
will head full, and its stem will be strong. Strength 
and fruition follow along the line of richness of soil. 
Why, then, should we say that poverty nourishes life ? 
Poverty does not nourish, poverty starves life. Poverty 
prevents development of the natural powers of the soul. 
Poverty is simply not having enough to nourish life. 
It is a continually changing line. What is competence 
at one time is practically poverty at another. 

Wealth, too, is a variable word. It means more than 
enough. And the word enough is continually changing 
its advance lines as civilization goes on. It takes an 
advanced step and says, This is enough now. On 
this side is poverty, on that side is wealth. That 
line of enough is far in advance of w r here it was 
drawn fifty or a hundred years ago ! For the soul 
of man has advanced ; new powers and possibilities 



144 THE NEW VOW OF POVERTY. 

have developed. The soul of man is a divine seed ; it is 
charged with certain powers and # possibilities that we 
know 7 something of, and others of which w T e know little, 
and still others of which we do not yet dream. It loves 
books, leisure, friendship, art, science, letters; it loves 
all the things which lie here as possibilities. Every 
longing of man is a promise of God. Every hope of 
man is God's great ultimatum. Far or near, remote or 
close, everything a man wants and craves, he shall have. 

For the want is as yet the unfolded power; plunge 
that want into favorable conditions, like seed planted in 
good soil, and it blossoms up into what w r e call complete 
and perfect life. You take the sweetest singer in the 
world and put her or him in certain conditions, and the 
voice never unrolls its possibilities of harmon^ or 
melody. 

Everywhere in the world, if circumstances were 
favorable, forces would develop. Just how or why we 
do not know ; but this something, transmitted, trans- 
lated, transplanted, far exceeds our estimate of its 
powers. Lincoln, taken from a Kentucky canebrake 
and brought out into richer soil, becomes our chief 
American. There were possibly many men like 
Lincoln in that canebrake that could have become 
great, but they were stifled in their coarse and rude 
surroundings. Poverty starves. Poverty allows no 
leisure. Poverty determines that a man shall work so 
many hours simply to get food, clothing, and shelter of 
a certain kind. 

Yesterday I was asked to attend the funeral of a 
woman whose name I had never heard, but I was told 
that for thirty-seven years in this town she had been 
earning a scanty living by washing, and that no one of 
her blood was left save a daughter, herself poor, living 
out in the country. Now, will you tell me that poverty 
did not crush and confine and starve this nature ; that 



THE NEW VOW OF POVERTY. 145 

the absolute necessity of working so many years at 
washing, the hardest of work, had not obstructed these 
forces and powers that God had implanted there? 
What was the wealth. of literature to her? She had no 
time, no strength for it, nor for art, nor science, nor 
friendship. She had no good house or good food or 
comfortable bed, or the fresh, joyous awakening in the 
morning. .Nothing ! absolutely nothing ! She had no 
part nor place in the pleasure of life ; she simply had 
been for thirty-seven years chained, as it were, by an 
invisible chain, to her wash-tub, while her young 
womanhood and the beauty of her face, and the erect- 
ness of her form, and the full outline of her features, 
and the rounded muscle, and the quick intense move- 
ment of nerve, all were worn away in this ceaseless, 
monotonous thirty-seven years of imprisonment in life. 

That is what poverty does in the world ; and it is for 
that reason you may preach poverty everywhere, but 
ninety-nine out of a hundred will try to escape it. It 
is a thing to be dreaded. It is a thing to be hated. It 
is a thing to be left behind, for it hinders a man in the 
possession of the birthright that God meant he should 
have. Poverty and civilization can not go together. 
Povertv means meanness of a Nation's life — low ideas, 
penny conceptions all the while. Civilization and pov- 
erty can not be named in the same breath, and their 
records are not written on the same page of history. 

On the other hand, wealth and civilization go to- 
gether. Wealth gives a margin. Wealth gives leisure. 
Wealth enables us to take time for work and time for 
rest. Wealth puts a soft bed under the wearied limb. 
Wealth provides music to comfort the tired heart. 
Wealth is the rich soil in w^hich a human soul-root un- 
folds its powers and becomes its possibility. God meant 
we should flee poverty, and one of the deepest words 

of our Bible is the prayer of Agur : " Give me neither 
10 



146 THE NEW VOW OF POVERTY. 

poverty nor riches, lest I be poor and curse God ; lest 
I be full and forget Him." Here comes the thought: 
Wealth stands directly related to the development of 
our souls. It has the same power and possibility that 
rich soil has. Always keep that in mind. And pov- 
erty has that lack of power and possibility that barren 
soil has. Keep that in mind. Riches or wealth em- 
bodies the possibility of the development of one's self, 
of his fellow and of the world. Our own powers, in 
their development, we can measure somewhat. Wealth 
means the possibility of an education to the poor boy ; 
means the possibility of an art education to a lover of 
the beautiful; means the possibility of the cultivation 
or the sense and power of music to one who loves to 
sing. It means just that. Therefore, we measure it by 
this power of development and we test it by this sense 
of obligation to development. 

Men say, coarsely, do not throw pearls before swine, 
they turn again and rend you; and wealth may be as 
unlovely and unfitting as a jewel in a pig's snout. It 
has no place there. Wealth may come to those who 
are ignorant, who can not use it, who scatter it, whose 
innate vulgarity spreads all over it until you hate to 
see them with it, and you think of pearls before swine. 
But, wealth, on the other hand, in its leisure and oppor- 
tunity, offers to us the development that is possible to 
us ; therefore, strictly speaking, we measure wealth by 
the opportunities it affords. We measure a civiliza- 
tion by the development of its citizens. Tell us what 
is the quality of the men you have in your country 
before we tell you whether you are a prosperous Nation 
or not. What effect has wealth had on yourself? Has 
it made you broader? Do you love books, music, art 
and friendship ? Are you interested in the great con- 
cerns of life? Grod placed you in the possession of 
your wealth. Has it left you mean and narrow and 



THE NEW VOW OF POVEKTY. 147 

unsympathetic, an extortionate oppressor, stealing 
from men opportunities by which they might have 
developed themselves ? Then your wealth is a curse to 
you ; it is like the leathern garment which Frederick II 
used to put about those who sold justice for money and 
then plunged them in a boiling cauldron of oil. Your 
cloak of riches becomes your curse. Holding it in the 
right way, this garment of riches becomes your blessing. 

And now, knowing well the temper and the spirit of 
the people of this country, from coarse to fine, from 
violent to peaceful; understanding well the temper of 
the working people, I wish to add these words : There 
is a great deal of unthinking criticism of wealth ; there 
is a certain amount of malicious and envious criticism ; 
but there is a vast amount of intelligent criticism as 
well. This intelligent criticism directs itself as though 
it were inspired by the finest truth, both as to the 
methods by which wealth is gained, and next as to the 
spirit in which wealth is held. And, first, as to the 
methods by wmich wealth is gained. It says, as it 
ought to say, that wealth that is gained by dishonest 
means ; that is extorted or wrung from the necessities 
of people ; that is gained by taking advantage of the 
lack of opportunities of the poor ; that might be gained 
by buying all the wheat in the world and then raising 
its price to twice what it ought to be; that has seized 
powers of the world and monopolized them, that such 
wealth is a hurt to the country and ought to be 
denounced. We ought to say that certain fortunes are 
good, and certain fortunes are bad, because the methods 
by which they have been gained are good or bad. 

On the contrary, the wealth that is accumulated by 
honest effort, frugality and industry; by days passed in 
wise thinking; that has been gained by conferring 
benefits upon others ; that has been gained and is held 
for the use of the world, I find no criticism of that. I 



148 THE NEW VOW OF POVERTY. 

have yet to read the first criticism of George Pea- 
body's vast fortune, and the first criticism of Peter 
Cooper's vast fortune. I find an intelligent discrimin- 
ation which, on the one hand, says wealth gained by 
oppressive extortion or monopolizing methods is to he 
denounced; and that wealth, which is gained by con- 
ferring a benefit upon the world, is to be recognized as 
legitimate wealth and a blessing to him who has it. 

Consider the spirit in which it is held. If it is held 
in selfishness, in indifference, if it is wildly wasted in 
sensuous pleasure, if it has become a corrupt means of 
acquiring power, then it is criticized, is challenged and 
denounced. But wealth which is held in sweetness for 
the uses of the world, which is all the while multiply- 
ing some one's pleasure, which is shared as one goes 
along, this wealth is blessed. Make the discrimination. 
It all resolves itself back to this. Wealth is the possi- 
bility of human development. If it is not used for 
this, for one's self and the world, it is a curse to the 
one who has made it, it is a threatening to the State 
that allows it. Wealth that is held for the develop- 
ment of humanity, that enlarges the possibilities, makes 
schools and colleges, and art galleries, and all the help- 
ful influences that lift men up, such wealth is legiti- 
mate and is that by which a man becomes yet more of 
a man. 

I can not understand that Jesus meant that a man 
should take the vow of poverty, but a vow of service. 
What he wanted the young man to do was this : Your 
life is a trust, hold it for those that need. Where there 
are tears, dry them. Where one is friendless, be a 
friend. Where one is astray, go after him. All that 
you have may be called Divine. What you are to relin- 
quish is your selfishness and your selfish appropriation 
of things. What you are to take on is the new vow 
of poverty — that is service. The new vow of poverty 



THE NEW VOW OF POVERTY. 149 

is this : I hold myself and what I have, to develop the 
powers and possibilities of my own nature and the 
powers and possibilities of human nature, wherever it 
may be. Do you say, who will take this vow ? I told 
you in a former sermon, that the man of science had 
taken it. I told you that the physician had virtually 
taken it. I can tell you that every teacher has taken 
that vow of poverty — of service. 

Go where you will through our country you can find 
men in splendid positions of power and influence in our 
schools large and small, who might, if they had chosen, 
have multiplied many times the scant salary which is 
given them in return for their services. Will you not 
agree with me that a man who can be the President of 
Cornell, or Harvard, or Ann Arbor, could become the 
peer of the lawyers of this land who make their one hun- 
dred thousand dollars a year, if he had chosen ? Is not 
that a vow of service ? Is it not the new vow of pov- 
erty ? Place him by any man occupying an equally im- 
portant position in society, and will you not see that he 
at least could have met him on the line of an equal 
possible fortune? Does he not content himself with 
his service and find a certain satisfaction in it ? 

Are there not men and women everywhere, outside 
of these professions, who have done it? Can not we 
name, upon the fingers of both hands, and upon these 
many times multiplied, rich men and rich women who 
have taken this vow of poverty, whose power and 
wealth are at the call of need and the w r orld ? I tell 
you their number is growing. !N"ot the relinquishment 
of wealth, but its wise distribution — holding it for 
human service ; this is the new vow of poverty which 
I believe more and more men and women will take. 
Does it seem an impossible thing to you that you 
can find an Agassiz who says : " I have so much to do 
in searching into the secrets of G-od, that I have no 



150 THE NEW VOW OF POVERTY. 

time to make money — that is, no time to make more 
than what I need to live upon ?" Do you think it im- 
possible to find a manufacturer who will say : " I will 
dedicate my powers and services to the development of 
the souls of the men who are intrusted to me?" Shall 
we not find many who will take the vow of the new re- 
nunciation and say: "I, too, will follow the Christ; 
here I am, powers and possessions, what wilt Thou 
have me to do?" And I look upon that as the most 
promising thing in the world. I, who stand where I 
see and hear these things, knowing the force and the 
amount of them, say there never was a time when the 
sense of humanity was so quick and earnest as now; 
when so many thousands of the rich were falling into 
line in the dedication of power, faculty and possession, 
taking the new vow of poverty, the renunciation of self- 
ishness, the devotion of what one has, be it much or little, 
be it in gold that may be weighed or in thoughts that 
may be felt. It is the new Christianity that the world 
is to see multiplied more and more — going about doing 
good. 

No St. Francis now with bare feet or tonsured head, 
with knotted girdle of rope, wedding poverty in its 
material sense, but men and women of splendid 
power, possession, health, and gladness, dedicating 
themselves by the new vow r . For the sake of men, my 
brothers and sisters, to lift them where hunger shall 
not gnaw them and ignorance shall not paralyse them, 
to transplant them from barren and sterile soil into 
rich soil, I hereby dedicate myself and consecrate my- 
self in the name of God and His son, Jesus" Christ. 



THE IDEAL IN MAK 



152 THE IDEAL IN MAN. 



Our Father, let the mind be in us which was in Christ 
Jesus. Help us to look at life in the world as he looked 
at it, with love for that which is in it, and kindly feel- 
ing toward all that are here. We pray Thee that we, 
like him, may be in the midst of this nature, attending 
to its lightest sound, responsive to its mute appeal, 
having time to look at the flowers that are by the way 
and watching the great movement of the stars that 
are above, recognizing the infinite providence of God, 
which, in its comprehensive provision, takes account 
both of good and evil, just and unjust. We come to- 
day, then, to ask that life may be looked at through 
his eyes, and not only -nature but people ; that we, like 
him, may see in every face the lineaments of our Father 
in heaven, underneath all the soiling, disfigurement and 
deformity which sin and suffering and sorrow have 
brought". We ask that we may see the ideal man, the 
humanity that is to be, and that we, like him, may 
seek to unloose these fettered spirits, to free these im- 
prisoned souls, to bring them out into the heritage of 
the sons of light. 

^vVe look over all this vast teeming world, and see so 
many constantly coming, so many going, grouping in 
little companies of friendship, family, state, and nation ; 
see them breaking apart through mutual dissension and 
quarrelings, each seeking his own and not the other's 
good. We ask again and again, as the moan of those that 
are crushed and the cry of those that are broken and the 
mute appeal of those who have no chance in life comes 
to us, what does it mean? Is there indeed a heart of 



THE IDEAL IN MAN. 153 

love iu the center of the universe ? Then, as we come 
to see some good man or know some good woman, all 
human nature takes on a possible glory. From one 
good man we see what all men might be ; from one 
good woman, what all women might be ; and our hope 
is fed and our faith finds a sure foundation as we labor 
for men in love, that some time there shall come to 
each one his privilege and his portion, that which he 
ought to have to fill him out to the roundness of a com- 
plete man ; that which every little child ought to have 
to make it a noble and useful man or woman. 

God, may we learn to look upon all kinds and con- 
ditions of people as he looked upon them, never in anger, 
always in pity, love, and hope, seeing as those of old 
saw — the painter a*nd the saint of old time — the glory 
resting like a halo about the head of the little child 
Jesus. May we too see with the eyes of faith the 
promise of a happier, better life playing about every 
little child, and the promise of its better and truer life 
made real to it. That which the faith and hope of the 
old time saw, we of a later time, more serious and more 
earnest too, with more complex problems to solve and 
greater burdens to lift, shall see in the face of every 
child the face of a child of God, and in the face of 
every woman and of every man the full development in 
womanhood and in manhood of the possibilities that lie 
in each. God, give to each of us the insight which 
reads the possible in the actual, the ideal in the real; 
and then when we have seen it, give us the earnestness 
which comes of a lofty purpose, the consecration which 
comes of a devotion to it, to see to it that that which 
is possible to each one shall become the actual for each 
one. 

We are proud of this Nation and of our part in it, 
of its traditions, memories, hopes and wealth. Oh, 
make us to be really proud of a freedom which shall 



154 THE IDEAL IN MAN. 

grant to each one his development ; of a truth which 
shall give to each one a key to lead him out of all dark- 
ness. Help us so to make the conditions of life that 
not one soul shall be imprisoned, and not one spirit 
sit in darkness. Enable us to place the same value 
upon other's children that we do upon our own, and as 
we would resist any law which took from our child his 
privilege and his portion, let us see to it that every law 
shall secure for each other child his privilege and his 
portion in the bounty and beauty of any gift of God. 

Let Thy blessing rest upon fathers and mothers and 
little children. Let the memory of our own past hap- 
piness in childhood and the pleasure we take in the 
little children that are with us now, or have been called 
of God away, prompt us in all endeavors to make life 
happier for all. 

Bless all who teach in schools. Give them the in- 
spiration of a great purpose. Give them the consecra- 
tion that comes with recognized duty. Be with and 
bless all those who mourn and comfort them, those that 
are bruised in heart, and bind up their wounds. Be to 
those that are lonely a comfort, and a friend to those 
that grieve, a guide and direction of life to those that 
wander, giving complete and full restoration of that 
which they have lost. 

May the world come to the knowledge of God as the 
waters cover the sea, and the accents of the Holy 
Ghost be not echoed and blown . about by the winds, 
but be the splendid triumphant marching songs of the 
children of God, as they go from victory to victory, 
conquering present evils and sweeping aside ancient 
abuses, until every hill of difficulty shall be leveled, 
and every valley of despondency shall be filled up.. 
Then shall they go on, Thy will being done on earth as 
it is in heaven. Amen. 



THE IDEAL IN MAN. 



' ' I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do 
good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use 
you, and persecute you ; that ye may be the children of your Father 
which is in heaven : for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on 
the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." 

Matthew v, 44-45. 

GTfREDERICK DOUGLASS said that Mr. Lincoln 
p)L was the only man in whose presence he forgot 
otf^) that he was a negro, the only man that treated 
him as a man, to whom the accident of color and the 
fact that he belonged to a despised race counted for ab- 
solutely nothing. In the presence of Mr. Lincoln he 
had nothing to ask by way of consideration. It was 
soul meeting soul. 

A good physician, when he stands before one that is 
sick, asks no question as to the condition and manner 
of life of this one that is now prostrated. Whether he 
or she may have been evil or good, just or unjust, prince 
or pauper, is to the true physician absolutely nothing. 
Here is an appeal for help, the appeal of humanity rep- 
resented in this one for the time being, asking for that 
skill and care with which the physician is entrusted. 
In each suffering one, good or bad, just or unjust, the 
true physician sees the appeal of the ideal human, and 
the accident of birth and the incident of condition count 
for nothing. 



156 THE IDEAL IN MAN. 

When a true teacher — a teacher of the noblest type — 
stands before a child, the condition of the child or 
the cause of the child's ignorance counts for nothing. 
She sees — because women are the natural teachers of 
children — an imprisoned soul here calling for help, a 
spirit shut up that may be led out into life and light. 
In this little child, humanity makes its appeal for de- 
liverance ; swathed in bands of ignorance, surrounded 
by clouds of darkness, the little spirit calls to her in the 
name of human kind that she will lead it out into 
knowledge, life, light and happiness. We call those 
great teachers who have had this inspiring power, to 
whom the accident of birth and the incident of condi- 
tion have meant nothing. Who have had the wonder- 
ful power of leading through all the sinuous ways which 
a spirit sometimes has to take to get to the light. Who 
have had the power at last of leading it out into the 
presence of the truth and into the enjoyment of God's 
universe. 

If you will turn to Charles Dickens's American Notes, 
you will find there the story of Laura Bridgeman re- 
lated, not as we now read it from the standpoint of our 
long review of her history, but as it seemed to one 
while she was as yet a little child. Here was an im- 
prisoned spirit, a little neglected child, two or three 
years of age, who could not speak, who could not hear, 
who could not see, who could not smell, and whose 
only sense was that of touch. Dickens pictures her as 
one imprisoned in a marble palace, and with noth- 
ing else to make known her wants save the fluttering 
of a little white hand. What a beautiful picture that 
is. It is well worth your while to turn over the pages 
of that not often read book, and see his exquisite pic- 
ture of an imprisoned soul in a marble prison, flutter- 
ing a white hand, and appealing for help. ]STow, this 
appeal for help was noticed by Dr. S. G-. Howe, and 



THE IDEAL IN MAN. 157 

through long years he patiently, lovingly worked with 
her, until at last that spirit came out into the almost 
perfect enjoyment of the beauty of God's universe and 
the presence of the truth. 

Or, take Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, that wonder- 
ful, wonderful book, wherein you have these great 
characters of Bishop Muriel and of Jean Valjean, and 
pretty little Cosette, begrimed, broken down with much 
hard work, beaten, afraid to go down in the dark, lift- 
ing beyond her strength the great bucket of water. 
Notice, first, the influence of Bishop Muriel over Jean 
Valjean, trusting him, believing in him, and withdraw- - 
ing his soul from blackness and despair. And then 
Jean Valjean, the spirit of Bishop Muriel being upon 
him, became the helper of little Cosette, leading her 
out into a beautiful, gracious womanhood. 

One sees in these little imprisoned souls the appeal of 
humanity. There may be disfigurement of face and 
deformity of figure ; there may be gross ignorance and 
darkness of spirit ; there may be the incrustation and 
defilement of sin; but to the true lover, the true 
teacher, the true reformer, the good bishop, the ideal 
human which is within and under an imprisoned spirit, 
an encased soul, makes its appeal in the name of ideal 
manhood or womanhood. 

I have been very much interested in an experiment 
not yet successfully completed by the IsTew York World. 
You will remember to have seen this incident, that 
going out upon the street and selecting a chance tramp, 
the offer was made to him of a new suit of clothes, a 
bath, and a week's board in a good hotel. The ques- 
tion before them was, What can be done if a man is 
humanely treated — a man who is broken and discour- 
aged, who has given way to despair, who says it is of 
no use to try again, who, if he should attempt to climb 
the way of life, would slip back perhaps through old 



158 THE IDEAL IN MAN. 

habit, perhaps more than all, through the clinging of 
old associations to him — what can be done when you 
treat a man as a man ? We know that a new serious- 
ness is in his face and a new light in his eye, like the 
recovery of one who is lost and regained. Here is a 
man who says he will try to live a better life. I my- 
self think the experiment would be a hopeful one. 
What matter how it was made ? Whether the adver- 
tisement of a newspaper, a Christian thought of rescue, 
or a real attempt to try to put around a man such con- 
ditions as will enable him to regain his lost position, 
through regaining his self-respect ? What matter how 
it was done ? Here was a feeling of a desire to help, 
to restore a man to his lost place. 

Mr. Lincoln saw in Frederick Douglass not a negro 
and not a slave, but the ideal man, the man that lies at 
the soul of all of us, of each of us, and treated him on 
that plane. A good physician sees in the sick person 
whether he is one who is sick from disease brought 
about by excess, or one who is sick through the simple 
chance or happening that comes to us all; he sees a 
human being, the ideal human, for the time making its 
appeal for help. The true teacher does not ask, Does 
this child come from a well-to-do family or from one 
that is over-burdened with poverty, from one that is of 
a degraded stock or a noble one ? She sees an impris- 
oned soul there, asking to be led out into life. Dr. 
Howe in Laura Bridgeman sees a human being making 
the appeal in the name of suffering humanity. She 
stands as the first in her class. Thousands since that 
time, of defective ones, deaf, dumb, blind, have been led 
out into life and love and joy, following that little hand 
which beckoned so piteously for help, their appeal 
being met in the same Christ spirit. 

Bishop Muriel saw a man before him who wore the 
yellow garment of the convict, but under it he saw an 



THE IDEAL IN MAN. 159 

ideal man in prison. It was to him at that time as if 
there were no other man in the world. He saw the 
victim of hard circumstance saying to him, " Can yon 
do anything for me, to put me back as a man among 
men again ?" And this tramp upon Broadway, dressed 
decently, fed well, sleeping in a good bed, treated as a 
man — in him the ~New York World sees the appeal of 
broken humanity for help. To most of us it seems an 
almost despairing work to bring back the one who has 
lost his manhood as such men have. 

The point I want to make is this : In all of us, and in 
each of us, there is the Ideal Human. At the soul of us 
rests a possible man or a possible woman. "We have 
not attained to that which we may be. We may not 
attain ever within our consciousness to what we might 
be, but it has been given to great lovers of men, to the 
Christ of God and to others in his spirit, to see in all 
suffering, broken, disinherited and troubled people this 
ideal humanity. Humanity makes its appeal through 
each one of these cases, and the response to it is that 
which we have to consider to-day. 

We ourselves, in our ordinary discussions, distinguish 
between the good and the evil, between the just and the 
unjust, but we are taught by one who knew the heart 
of God as none else knew it, that God's sun shines upon 
the evil and upon the good; that his rain falls upon 
the just and upon the unjust, and that the infinite love 
treats without discrimination in the distribution of its 
bounty all kinds and conditions of people, whatever 
their history, whatever their condition, and whatever 
their hope. That it is only by an infinite love which 
refuses to make any harsh discriminations that the 
lapsed may be brought back and the lost may be found. 

There are many definitions of Christianity, many 
things which distinguish it from other religions. To 
me the one characteristic thing of Christianity is its 



160 THE IDEAL IN MAN. 

attitude toward every man, its treating of every man on 
the high plane that Mr. Douglass says Mr. Lincoln met 
him upon. "In his presence I forgot that I was a 
negro." In the presence of Jesus Christ every man and 
woman forgot his or her condition, history, or 
sin. He met each one of them upon the plane 
of the ideal humanity which he saw enclosed in them. 
Nicodemus comes to him weighed down with the 
weight of much learning. Zaccheus comes to him 
cankered by the gathering of ill-gotten wealth. Before 
him Mary of Magdala trails her lost womanhood, and 
so of many another sinner and outcast. I take it, if I 
understand these gospels aright, that in his presence 
men and women forgot the circumstances and the inci- 
dents of their lives. His soul appealed to their souls, 
and with exquisite courtesy read the best that was in 
them. He treated each of them as a man or a woman 
would love to be treated by one of the most noble and 
worthy of earth. If you will thread the gospels with 
this thought, how Jesus Christ treated men and 
women, you will see all through them this exquisite 
courtesy, which we call the gentlemanhood of man ; 
no scorn, no withdrawing of garments, no saying "I am 
holier than thou," no distinguishing between the just 
and unjust and the evil and the good; but this treating 
of every one as the ideal man would love to be treated. 
In each one of them he saw the imprisoned soul. The 
ingrown evil or the accidental evil to him made no 
obstruction. Through ignorance and through sin, past 
shame and behind sorrow, there where the soul sat 
cowering by the embers of some lost hope, ashamed to 
look up, there the Christ passed with his sympathy and 
with his love, and lifted up that which was bowed down 
and straightened that which was broken. 

And I can understand how, wherever these gospels 



THE IDEAL IN MAN. 161 

go, in whatever tongue, they make the simple, pro- 
found impression which they made upon the earliest 
ages. That here was One who made a man forget that 
he was a sinner ; made a woman forget that she was 
an outcast ; made a man look up and hope again, and 
take hold of life, and go hack and regain that which 
had slipped from his grasp. He made a man find the 
honesty or the purity, the generosity or the kindness 
which he had lost in life. This was the treatment 
which Jesus Christ accorded to men and women. He 
made them forget the accident of their condition and 
the shame and the dishonor of their history. He 
treated each one of them as though he were the high- 
est, and she the noblest, of men or women, and led 
them back into the places which they had left. And 
the words he gave are just such words as these : Meet 
men and women on the plane of their noblest humanity. 
Look at every little child as God looks at it. Under 
every disfigurement of face and every deformity of 
body see the ideal beauty, that which this one has 
missed, ought to have had, and may yet have. 

In Rogue Eiderhood, despised and feared, the people 
find a human being who must be rescued from drown- 
ing, must be brought back to consciousness, even 
though when they brought him back they shrank from 
him — the ancient fear and suspicion taking its place 
again. The christian impulse was for a moment 
awakened there, and then withdrawn while the human 
dread asserted itself. 

Love your enemies. An enemy is a man who does 

not understand you, who has not taken your point of 

view, who sees things obliquely through mists and 

clouds and errors. Bless them that curse you. A 

man that curses you is a man that does not understand 

you, for if he knew you he would not curse you. Pray 

for them that despitefully use you. Treat men as God 
n 



162 THE IDEAL IN MAN. 

treats them. His sun and his rain make no distinc- 
tions. Look at them as the light of divinity falls upon 
them ; see them as common offspring, with yourselves, 
of the great Father. Say " brother " and " sister." 
Call them hack to life in that way. So you shall save 
them. The last words he gave to Peter, who was ques- 
tioning him about the future, were : Feed my sheep ; 
feed my lambs. 

It was with this thought, the new treatment of men, 
that the word of Jesus Christ went out into the Roman 
world ; to slaves and oppressed people, who had never 
known anything but the hard stone to sleep on, and 
the food that was thrown more grudgingly to them 
than it was to the pigeon and the dog; to the despised 
and to the abandoned ; and to those whose very aban- 
donment and loss of place only made them yet lower; 
to men who might never hope even to be soldiers in 
the army, that place being held for honorably born 
men; to women who had been left orphans; and to 
little children who had been abandoned at the pillar — 
to such as these went out the word that the Christ of 
Galilee, one Jesus of Nazareth, born of humble par- 
ents, and himself knowing the pressure of poverty, had 
taught that every man and woman was as good as 
himself; that all were children of God, and each man 
was to treat his fellow as he himself in his best mo- 
ment would like to have every man and woman treat 
him. 

It was this good influence, the human treatment, not 
of pity which drops its tears, not of kindness which 
distributes its dole, not of benevolence or general good 
feeling, but of the personal identification of soul with 
soul, it was this which gave the great motive power to 
the spirit of the new gospel, and each one felt dignified 
and ennobled by the new name which was given him, 
by the new treatment that was accorded him. 



THE IDEAL IN MAN. 163 

You shall never understand the spread of Christianity 
in the early Roman world until you know that there 
were men and women there by the hundreds and thous- 
ands and millions to whom never before had come such 
word as this : You are a man ; you are a woman ; you 
are a child of the Great Father ; we come to you in the 
love of the Elder Brother, to lift you up where you 
are fallen, to befriend you when you are lonely, to treat 
you as your best thought would ask to be treated. 

You who talk in these days about your personal sal- 
vation, understand that it was with no such low mes- 
sage that Jesus Christ was preached in the olden time. 
Life to them did not mean the eternal life. Life meant 
the blossoming and bea'utifying of the whole nature. 
When he saw a slave, a miserable man, a woman hope- 
less and despondent, he saw the great humanity there, 
the great whole of the race there, and tried to treat 
each one as if he were the only one, and to make him 
forget that he was a slave and despised; and to make 
her forget her sorrow and her loneliness. He lifted 
them up. My brother, my sister, in the name of Jesus 
Christ, your brother, son like you, of the common 
Father — I lift you up out of your despair and hopeless- 
ness and draw you out of your ignorance, vice and sin 
and place you upon the common platform of humanity, 
and bid you hope in God and believe in yourself. That 
was the motive force that has always characterized 
Christianity in its great moments. 

Francis Xavier, Ignatius of Loyola, Francis of Assisi, 
Bernard the Carthusian, of the olden time, and others 
in modern times, treated men as men, women as women. 
The condition, the history, the cause, everything is for- 
gotten. Here is an imprisoned soul. Here is a captive 
spirit. Here is a blind, a lame, a deaf, a sinful one. 
Humanity appeals to us. Christ beckons to us : " In 
my name preach the gospel of good cheer and renewed 



164 THE IDEAL IN MAN. 

life." See what a lift it, has. Wherever that gospel 
goes without any human interpretation upon it, wher- 
ever the image and knowledge of him goes who spake 
words of grace and truth, it has the same living, joy- 
giving power that it had then. 

This one thought of how we treat men, the point of 
view from which we look at them, the dignified way in 
which we regard them, the trust which we repose in 
them, wherever this thought goes it is the saving prin- 
ciple of Christianity. During its corruptions, again and 
again, little groups started up, we know not why and 
we can not trace their history. Among these were the 
Poor Brothers of L} 7 ons, Arnold of Brisi, and the Wal- 
denses. These treated men as "Jesus treated them, for- 
getting their condition, history and cause of their sin, 
seeing in them, imprisoned souls that plead mutely for 
help, beckoning hands that ask for release, blindness 
that wanted sight, lameness that asked for strength. 
Incrustations of formalism came, as men hardened 
down into doctrine, as the revenge of one man became 
the cruel creed of another generation, as the hatred of 
one man became by and by the dogma of a church, then 
it was these arose and asserted the human kinship. 
They treated men as Jesus treated them, loved them and 
led them back into life, and all at once the old forms 
broke up and wore away, and a new movement of hu- 
manity was begun. 

I read history in this light. It has no interest to me 
save in its human interest. It touches me there. I see 
wherever a church by the power of its human life, breaks 
through these incrustations and hard gatherings of 
dogma and ceremony, there the old force comes to it 
again, the old life in all its simplicity and power, the 
restoration of manhood, the regaining of self-respect. 
As you come down the ages, wherever you find a great 
thought and a great movement spontaneous, know then 



THE IDEAL IN MAN. 165 

that some one is trying to treat men as they ought to 
be treated. Our century is a great century. It will be 
known to history as the revival of Christianity; the re- 
installment of the Christ in his place; drawing him 
back from the clouds which men have wrapped around 
him ; giving him his place among men again. The re- 
discovery of Jesus Christ is the great fact of the nine- 
teenth century. 

All our great movements- take their color and their 
depth of tone from this thing. You see a little child 
lost. Why should you feel that it is your business? 
Because humanity appeals to you in that child. You 
see a little child defective in hearing. Why do we 
build our deaf and dumb asylums. The right of all 
and of every man appeals to us in this little child for 
help. If there was only one deaf child in the world, 
still we would feel that no expense was too great to 
restore it and put it in touch again with humanity. 
We do this in Jesus Christ's name and spirit, treating 
men as God treats them, on broad principles and the 
plane of humanity. Through this come all our modern 
reforms, the insane are gathered into hospitals, the 
blind into institutes, the feeble-minded into schools. 
They appeal to us. Humanity beckons to us. I am in 
want, relieve me. I can not see, lend me your hand 
that I may walk. I can not hear, can you not bring to 
me some tidings of the great world. Beckoning hands 
like Laura Bridgman's shut up in marble palaces, sin- 
ful souls — suffering and sorrowing souls — all of them 
appeal to us. . 

We say they are children of the same God. The 
Ideal Human in them appeals to us ; for it might be our 
child, our brother, our sister, our friend, that is there, 
and we spring glad and jubilant to the rescue of these 
imprisoned souls. We break loose from all forms and 



166 THE IDEAL IN MAN. 

ceremonies if necessary in order that we may carry to 
them God's love and help. 

The same thought rests upon us in our social life. 
Why is it we are in this turmoil and agitation. Be- 
cause we feel this appeal that comes to us. There are 
men that are broken down with much work. A human 
being lacks liberty ; can not find his development. We 
are looking at them as Jesus Christ looked at them. 
That is the basis of all modern movements in industry, 
in society, in reform, in religion. Men are seeing, as 
they never saw before, the imprisoned spirits, children 
that can not read and write, men everywhere lackiug 
the development which we feel every man is entitled 
to. This is the gospel of Jesus Christ. This we learn 
from his great heart, whose sun shines upon the evil 
and upon the good. Little by little we are learning 
that Jesus Christ is the center of societv, the center of 
religion, the center of reform, the center of industry; 
that no wheel can turn uuless he stands by the machine ; 
that no loom can 'weave and no shuttle move unless it 
is thrown in the spirit of his humanity. 

Every teacher must look at a little child and say, 
that is the only child in the world to me. It is impris- 
oned, shut up in ignorance, its soul is there, it can not 
get out unless I lead it out. All that genius, insight, 
love, patience and skill can do I will do to lead that 
little child out into its possible heritage of life and 
light. Every one of us must feel wherever there is an 
insane, a defective, a neglected child of the street, it is 
my child, and no man can pass an alley where a little 
child moans in pain or cries in anguish, without feel- 
ing his own child possibly there or coming to such a 
condition at some time. When I make every child in 
the world my child, then every one in the world will 
treat my child as if it were his child, and the happiness 



THE IDEAL IN MAN. 167 

and the security of all becomes assured, because of the 
common claim which all children have upon us. 

And every man of you that employs men has got to 
study this industrial movement from this point of view. 
You have got to look at every man that is in your 
employ as if he were your child, your brother, your 
self, as being, in a certain sense, an imprisoned soul. 
You can not tell why he is there. It may be you can 
not help him, but let me tell you that your boy will be 
there unless you treat him in kindness and in love as 
Jesus Christ would treat him. Every one that is below 
the level of what he might be is there because of the 
consent and indifference of those that are here. Jesus 
Christ had it in his heart to give to every one his fullest 
development. To him there was nothing hopeless, 
there was nothing beyond recall. 

This is the test' of Christianity. Christianity is the 
attitude we take toward every man and woman. A 
man is a christian who treats every other man or 
woman in the world as Jesus treated them, and as he 
himself would like to be treated. It makes infinite 
difference to the God we worship how we treat or how 
we neglect the little broken, troubled, disfigured or 
deformed ones that are here. 

Jesus Christ was the first man who ever made a 
woman forget that she was a sinner; who ever made a 
publican forget that he was a dishonest man ; who ever 
made a man deformed and disfigured forget that he was 
crouched. Soul appealed to soul. He met him on the 
plane of humanity and he said, " My brother, let us 
walk together toward life; let us share God's bounty 
and enjoy his beauty, and extend our common helpful- 
ness to those who need it." 



THE JOY OF LIFE AND THE LIFE OF JOY 



170 THE JOY OF. LIFE AND THE LIFE OF JOY 



Now let a quiet and peaceful spirit come to us, our 
Heavenly Father, all the thoughts of the daily life be 
dismissed for the moment, and only such as shall come 
from the touch of the Infinite Spirit on our own be in 
our minds. 

Let the voice of him who prays but guide or suggest 
the unuttered prayers of the hearts of those here met 
together — all kinds and conditions, all children of the 
Father above. 

We thank Thee that great and noble thoughts come 
to us and stir our minds ; that we are not left to grope 
in this world, to struggle with petty cares and vexing 
difficulties alone, but are sustained by mighty principles 
and ennobled by great ideals that come into the heart 
from Thee, and which teach us to live according to the 
thoughts of Jesus Christ, the principles of the Kingdom 
of Heaven. We pray Thee to make it evident to us 
that there is always a battle to be fought and always 
need for earnest effort. May every boy be firm and 
true to do that which is right ; help him to hate and 
scorn all mean, ignoble and unworthy things. 

Lift life up from where it grovels to where it shall be 
seen as the great working out of G-od's plan. Make all 
to see that they sustain in their souls the great princi- 
ples of righteousness; that they carry there the seeds 
of the future civilization. And now bless those that 
mourn, and comfort them ; bless those whose arms are 
empty, and fill their hearts with the comforting thought 
that it is well with those who are with the Lord. Bless 



THE JOY OF LIFE AND THE LIFE OF JOY. 171 

those that sorrow for one that has gone away ; be with 
those who are lonely. G-ive to the discouraged new 
courage again. Our Heavenly Father, let peace come 
to all who are troubled. Be with those whose hair is 
growing gray, and as they look over into the beyond, 
let them have no fear, 

May the peace of God rest upon us all, through Jesus 
Christ, our Lord. 




THE JOY OF LIFE AND THE LIFE OF JOY. 



These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in 
you, and that your joy might be full. 

John xv, 11. 

Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith ; who, for 
the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, 
and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. 

Hebrews xii, 2. 

|E have had a succession of wonderfully beau- 
tiful days. The air is sweet as the breath of 
God. The trees are in tender leaf of beauti- 
ful and varied form. The air is melodious with the 
song of birds, the clear tone of the blackbird and the 
peculiar note of the robin; and to those who have 
the time to look and listen, everything in nature has 
brought a new sense of joy. 

Ordinarily we miss this element of joy in nature. 
But such days as this make us faintly conscious that 
there is, after all, a permanent element of joy in nature. 
The business man goes down the street with his head 
bent, engrossed with the affairs of life. The physician 
has some case of peculiar gravity which is making him 
anxious and solicitous. So whatever may be our bus- 
iness or our calling, we are ordinarily so engrossed in it 
as to miss these peculiar glories of opening life in 
spring ; and we fail to see that what we may call the joy 
of life is a permanent element and provision in nature. 
I am aware that life is a disappointment to many, 



174 THE JOY OP LIFE AND THE LIFE OF JOY. 

a care to a great many ; that there are doleful sounds 
in it, and pitiful and repellant sights in it. But it has 
been the faith of those who have loved most and studied 
deepest that this that repels us in nature and that calls 
forth our pity, is a transient and not a permanent 
characteristic, is a thing that shall pass away, while 
there remains, after all, the element of joy. 

Perhaps we are indebted to Wordsworth more than 
to any other person for the revelation of this charac- 
teristic of joy in nature. Coming out of an arid and 
barren century when men had not time and did not care 
to listen to the sounds and to look at the beauty and 
bounty of G-od in nature, he led first one and then 
another, until at last a glorious company followed him 
to where the little celandine bloomed and where the 
daffodil was dancing, where birds were singing, and 
where simple, common things of life that had not been 
tainted and broken and discouraged, showed that God 
was here in his simple, primal characteristic of the God 
of joy. All through the poems of Wordsworth — and 
it were well worth one's while to take the little collec- 
tion which Matthew Arnold has so wonderfully intro- 
duced — you find this thought of nature as being the 
home of a peculiar joy in itself. It is not that I am 
in sorrow and therefore nature seems draped in sorrow 
and drooping in pity, but it is that, in the natural life 
of things, all flowers and birds and young things, there 
is a joy belonging to themselves, and not conferred 
upon them by the imagination of man. The waves on 
the lake dance with the daffodils, and everything, he 
says, seems to enjoy the life it lives. He can not meas- 
ure the thoughts of the birds ; but they have their 
peculiar pleasure in life. If no one is looking at flower 
or at bird — if, from behind a tree or from behind a rock 
you glance at it, there seems to be a dance, and lift, and 
happiness, in the natural life where the fear of man 



THE JOY OF LIFE AND THE LIFE OF JOY. 175 

and the dread of death has not entered. The hare leaps 
by in joy, and the squirrel upon the bough — everything, 
says this poet, the interpreter or revealer of God in 
nature — everything seems to have a peculiar pleasure 
in living. Nature, when we look at it in this way, 
where the foot of man has not trampled down its tender 
flowers, and the shadow of man has not crept over its 
birds, nature then has a certain joy in itself. 

It is true, of course, there is the claw and the talon, 
and the curved beak. We can not ignore the lion and 
the tiger, the hawk and the butcher-bird. There are 
times when nature is red and raw with raven, and one 
shrieks against the creed of kindness ; but when that 
is passed away, and we enter into sympathetic, natural 
relationships with little things, as we watch the lambs 
play, and the first awkward movements of the newborn 
calf or colt, when we come into sympathetic, natural 
relationship with nature ; there comes to us a feeling 
as if joy was not something stolen unawares from the 
hours of the day ; but that it was a permanent element 
in nature ; something that God meant should exist for 
all and through all times. 

And looking at this most closely, men of great faith 
in religion and in science, men that have loved to study 
the laws of God in star and in plant and in human na- 
ture, have always felt that that which we call evil with 
its suffering and sin and sorrow, was transient; that 
the doleful sounds were to disappear with the discord- 
ant sounds that seem to lapse in meeting harmonies ; 
and that the joy of God should some time be answered 
by the joy of man — the God of gladness, the God of 
glee, as Socrates once called him. 

It seems to us as if the God of this universe were 
so busy about immense affairs, like a business man who 
has vast interests, with deep-set, tired eyes and over- 
weighted brow, always wondering what he is to do 



176 THE JOY OF LIFE AND THE LIFE OF JOY. 

next, and moving with slow step. That is not the 
natural conception of God. That is not the concep- 
tion which the natural and therefore the Christian 
religion would give of God. A deeper, better thought 
is that which goes back to think of God as the " God 
of gladness and the God of glee," and which finds in 
the element of joy in simple, untainted, natural things, 
the true note of nature. 

Now what is true in nature below man is true also 
of the living things that are about us, men, women, 
and children. When Jesus said of children, " of such 
is the kingdom of heaven," what did he mean by it? 
Why, the thing that fascinates us in a little child is, in 
the first place, its sense of wonder and its delight in all 
new, fresh things ; that, in the morning it gets up with- 
out a headache and springs and trips along the fioor 
and breaks out in song as natural as the song of a bird ; 
it is in kindly relation with strangers and does not fear 
anybody ; and, until selfishness has tainted it, gives and 
shares freely. This is the fascinating thing about a 
little child ; and when Jesus Christ said the kingdom 
of God was made up of the child-like and of children, 
he meant the sense of wonder and delight in new things 
that are continually opening to men in nature and in life. 

One of Browning's most exquisite poems is that of 
the little silk winding girl named Pippa, who, on her 
only holiday in the whole year, New Year's Day, goes 
along singing this song : 

" The year's at the spring, 
The day' s at the morn ; 
Morning's at seven ; 
The hill-side' s dew-pearled ; 
The lark' s on the wing ; 
The snail's on the thorn ; 
God's in His heaven — 
All's right with the world." 



THE JOY OF LIFE AND THE LIFE OF JOY. 177 

And, in this connection, let me repeat that verse 
which I have read before : 

" Iterate, reiterate, snatch it from the hells, 
Circulate and meditate that God is well ; 
Pay the ringers to ring it, put it in the mouths of the bells ; 
Get the singers to sing it, that God is well." 

But, again, from the mouths of little children, as well 
as from the voices of birds and the flowers, comes this 
thought to us, the permanent element of joy in natural, 
simple life. It has been true also of men and women 
who have not been spoiled in the making ; those who 
have carried their heart of faith up into their manhood 
and womanhood ; who have learned to do the kindly 
offices of friendship in the neighborhood; who love one 
another, and who have little children about them, and 
have leisure for taking a share in life ; they, too, have 
somehow felt as if there was an element of joy in life, 
that it is good to live, like the Homeric man whom 
Thoreau found cutting wood, who just laughed from 
his pure enjoyment of life. 

I know many such. I know many unhappy people, 
miserable people, tragic lives, and pitiful cases ; but I 
have always thanked God that the sorrow of the sorrow- 
ful has never -made me believe that it is a world of sor- 
row; nor has the corruption of one man made me think 
that all are corrupt. And I believe that those of us who 
try to keep the heart free in the simple and natural rela- 
tionships of friend and neighbor, will say that there is 
a permanent element of joy in nature. God meant life 
to be glad and not dark. 

The New Testament is saturated with just this 

thought; wherever Jesus went there gladness seemed 

to come. The hope that Was in man found its way to 

the fore. Little children climbed upon his knees ; others 

whispered their play into his ear; young men and 
12 



178 THE JOY OF LIFE AND THE LIFE OF JOY. 

women came to him to know what they should do 
about life; the merriment went on, with its festivity, at 
the table ; the musicians never stopped their singing ; 
everywhere the presence of Christ was the presence of 
joy; the awakening to the distribution of the joy and 
light that was around them and in themselves. Some- 
how the best that was in a man came out, and not the 
worst. It was only that man who was slinking along 
on his way to rob some widow or orphan of her por 
tion, that, as he went by, hurled at this man the accu- 
sation that he was a gluttonous man and a wine bibber, 
and the friend of sinuers. All simple, kindly, natural 
men and women that went about the work of life, who 
were not grasping or avaricious, found in his presence 
a joy they could not explain, the lift of life, the eleva- 
tion of spirit ; somehow the world looked lighter and 
kindlier to them. 

It is true of all those who followed him. Take your 
concordance and find how often the word joy is repeated 
in the gospels and in the epistles. It would seem to 
you as if it were the one great word to them — " that 
joy might be full ; " that his disciples might have his joy 
in themselves ; that they might have the patience to 
endure because of the joy that they saw in a serious and 
earnest and consistent life. It runs all through it. 

In the first century, when the persecutions were the 
fiercest and the christian was thrown to the lions, then 
those that hid in the catacombs pictured out their hap- 
piness in this way : They drew the picture of Orpheus, 
the sweetest of all singers, and they drew about him the 
beasts that had been conquered by the melody of his 
harp ; how he had conquered Cerberus, the Dog of Hell, 
and found and brought back the wife that he loved from 
the world of shadows ; or they pictured Christ as a 
young vine dresser coming down from the mountain 
heavy laden with grapes, or as a young shepherd with 



THE JOY OF LIFE AND THE LIFE OF JOY. 179 

a lamb in his arms — every picture which the imagina- 
tion of man has created to try to realize for himself the 
joy that was in this life, all these are found rudely 
charactered on the walls of the catacombs, while the 
hungry Roman was hunting for them often, and they 
knew the end of life was to be a torch for Nero or to 
make a holiday for the Roman people. Oh, yes, this 
element of joy runs through the conceptions of life that 
Jesus and the early apostles and christians had. It is 
harmonious with the joy of nature; and as in nature 
and in little children and simple, natural men and 
women, so there was in Jesus Christ and those about 
him the life of joy. It sustained him during the 
troubles of life, and enabled him, as it enabled them, to 
endure the shame of the cross. Down underneath the 
surface of the heart, unrevealed by any word, unuttered 
by any voice of man, a central peace kept house in the 
midst of the endless agitation. 

A life of joy! I want to bring to you as the great 
heritage of every living person, as the promised birth- 
right of every little child, as belonging to us all, the 
life of joy; that G-od is the God of gladness, of happy 
thoughts, and homes and hearts, and of all that makes 
life happy. 

I can not shut my eyes, of course, to the things that 
make life the opposite of joyful ; to the embittered pros- 
pects of many that start out in life with the brightest 
of expectations ; to the sad experience of the young ; to 
the misanthropy of those who have missed success 
in life : to the friendlessness and tragedy of lost honor, 
and truth and virtue. All these experiences exist. We 
must not ignore them. They are facts and we must 
face them. Whatever is a fact in this world must not 
be overlooked. But it seems to me he reads history, 
nature and religion wrong, who does not see that in the 



180 THE JOY OF LIFE AND THE LIFE OF JOY. 

provision that is made for human nature in this phys- 
ical nature that is about us, there is this wonderful gift 
of joy ; that God meant it to be so, and that all simple,, 
natural folks and things find it so until they lose it, 
when the shades of the prison-house gather around the* 
growing life. 

]STow it were well to ask ourselves for a moment or- 
two what are the elements of joy in life ; what gave to 
Jesus Christ this joyful spirit; what could give to you 
and to me a life of joy. I think, as I try to analyse it, 
that in the first place there was a consciousness of the 
presence of God. God is everywhere, we used to be told 
as children. Only we were told it in such a dreadful way ! 
We were told it as if he were spying out everything that 
we did, frowning at things, as if the plays of children 
and the happy activities of life were foreign to his na- 
ture. Why, I heard a minister say, but a few days 
since, " Christianity is not a natural thing, it is the 
natural thing to do wrong ; Christianity does not grow 
up out of the heart of nature, but it is a provision made 
to withstand the natural tendency to degradation of 
the soul." Dear friends, I do not believe that. I be- 
lieve that Christianity opens to us the thought of God as 
a presence in nature and in life. It was this innateness, 
this abiding presence of the power of the spirit which 
we call God that made life a glorious thing to Jesus 
Christ, which opened up to him in the heart of every 
flower the secret of the Divine presence. It made him 
see in the care which every bird had the universal, all- 
comprehending providence. It made him know that 
whether we sleep or wake we are under his care and 
protection ; that while we, in our distribution of jus- 
tice, might not let the sun shine upon the evil and upon 
the good, God lets it fall with impartial bounty. It was 
this presence of God in star and sun, in wind and leaf 
that made the thought of God a joy to Jesus Christ. 



THE JOY OF LIFE AND THE LIFE OF JOY. 181 

If I could think that some friend of mine, powerful and 
wise, was always at work for the good of humanity ; if 
I was coming upon the trace of his action ; could hear 
the echoes of some encouraging word that he had left 
behind him ; could catch faintly some word of song he 
was singing ; had seen where he was distributing food 
to the hungry ; seen the happy faces of children with 
tears not yet dry, what a thought I would have of my 
friend. And it was this presence of God in little 
things, in fluttering insects as well as in flying birds, in 
flowers as well as in the heart of man, that made the 
thought of God a joy to Jesus Christ. 

I can not think it would be a joy not to find 
God in this world. I can not think it would be a joy 
to call into the heart of the flower and get no answer; 
to look up into the great empty spaces above and find 
no evidence there. When I look at the stars and think 
how ceaseless and how restful they move; how the 
seasons come and go with God's bounty in their laps ; 
how every morning his sun rises in beauty, and how 
every night it sinks in glory ; how he takes care of the 
bat that flits by on leathern wing and the beetle that 
hums, the thought of God comes, not as when I was a 
child, of one from whom I must hide, but with a 
bounding feeling of happiness, and a sense of life in it. 

Added to that was this other thought that Jesus had. 
It was the thought of brotherhood, of fraternity. The 
presence of God in nature and in life gave to him also 
the thought of the presence of God in man. Every 
man and woman and little child was a child of God. 
This gave to him the sense of brotherhood. He was 
not repelled by disfigurement or by deformity, but he 
drew near to everything with a sense of brotherhood 
and a feeling of sympathy. 

So it seems to me that a life of joy rests on these two 
thoughts : The first is the presence of God in nature, 



182 THE JOY OF LIFE AND THE LIFE OF JOY. 

in history, in human law, in all institutions, in charity, 
in reform, in business, in politics ; the presence of a 
just, wise, loving God, bringing order out of confusion. 
And next, the fact that man is set in this world not 
against man, but for and with him ; that the stranger 
is not our enemy but our friend ; that, as the old Hebrews 
said, " God loveth the alien and the stranger." It is 
this sense of brotherhood and our relation to him that 
is the second element of joy in this world. God gives 
us then the heritage and the birthright of the joy of 
life, means that we shall have it, and he says to each 
one of us, Life shall be a joy to you when you shall 
cease to be afraid of me and shall love my presence ; 
when you shall see the evidences of this presence in 
every flower and bird and man and woman, and 
when you shall look in loving sympathy upon all 
kinds and conditions of people, and shall try out of 
your fullness to meet their want; when the "such as I 
have" shall exchange itself with the such as another 
has, and my plenty goes to your penury. 

The dark ages — why were they dark, dear friends ? 
Because this thought of God which gave such joy to 
Jesus and those who were with him, had receded into 
theology and dogmatic form and ceremonial worship. 
God was looked on, the painters pictured him, as the One 
in whose hand were the lightnings and who held the 
thunders, and who selected here and there a few for 
himself, relegating the many to misery ; when human 
brotherhood and christian friendship had become a 
dead name, and each man regarded his neighbor with 
suspicion, afraid to touch the hand lest the poisoned 
ring should infect him; expecting one to rob him of 
his wealth ; when every man was the enemy of every 
other man. 

If the world is dark, it is because of the darkness in 
us ; because the rays of the divine light can not find 



THE JOY OF LIFE AND THE LIFE OF JOY. 183 

anything to reflect themselves from; but when the 
light falls upon the hearts of men and women it breaks 
up, as the light falling on the facets of a diamond 
breaks into beautiful colors, into light and love and 

joy- 
There came a movement in the middle of the 

eighteenth century along the whole line of human 

nature. The spirit of man awakened. There was a 

stir in life. Poets began to sing songs ; Burns, Crabbe, 

Wordsworth, Coleridge, and many another. After 

that all great charities and reforms began. Pinel goes 

into the hospital for the insane and strikes the shackles 

from a poor girl's limbs, and a hundred thousand men 

and women at once spring up into life and blessing. 

Cruel laws are erased from the statute books of 

England ; reforms began to mingle with the politics of 

France and America. The colonists declare their 

independence of England, and lay down as a statute 

that all men are created free and equal. Everywhere 

there is revolution — the spirit of man waking up in the 

presence of God. 

We are here to-day in his presence. This is a 
century of joy and gladness. Sweeter songs are sung, 
better lives lived, more abuses swept out, because 
science has brought us the thought of God in nature. 
Poetry has revealed to us the thought of joy that is in 
nature and in life. Again and again we are shown our 
duties to our neighbor. Jesus stands with benediction 
in his hand, kissing the lips of the slave and the little 
child and saying, I would that my joy might be yours. 

The joy of life is the consciousness of God in nature 
and in life ; and of fraternity among men and women. 
A life of joy is our privilege and our birthright ; and if 
we have it not it is because one of these two elements 
is lacking. He who believes in God and loves his fel- 
low men need never know a sad, dark moment. The 



184 THE JOY OF LIFE AND THE LIFE OF JOY. 

circumstances of his life may be like those about my 
bird, from whom the light of day is shut away, he may 
be blind ; sweet sounds may never penetrate to him, he 
may be deaf; many of the things that make life com- 
fortable may be wanting to him, he may be poor ; but 
the secret of joy is in him in the possession of the two 
great prominent thoughts, the presence of God in na- 
ture and life, and the universal brotherhood of man. It 
is this that gives color to all history, it is this that gives 
nobility to all life in the present. It is this that ena- 
bled Jesus Christ to endure the cross with its shame, 
that sustained the martyr at the stake, that made the 
breath of Joan of Arc go out in longing after God. It 
is this that sustains and strengthens. 

This is the privilege of all. This makes the christian 
life a serious duty. So long' as a doleful sound and the 
wailing cry of a suffering child is heard ; so long as 
the wan face of one who has missed success in life, or 
the degradation of a lost honor is seen ; so long as a 
man or woman is in this world who can not sing and 
be glad; no christian can fold his arms and enjoy his 
life, for the unrest that is there. The serious business 
of life is to carry the joy of Jesus Christ into every 
heart and make it the common possession of every 
soul. 

God gives us our food in due season ; great thoughts 
come to light the night like stars ; songs soothe us 
when we are troubled ; we hear the voice that says, Be 
not afraid. Our God is around us; we live and move 
and have our being in his presence ; closer than our 
breathing, we can not escape him if we would. There 
is no place where we can hide from his loving look; 
no darkness that shall shroud and enclose us from 
the tender glance of his searching eye. We are em- 
bosomed in love and surrounded by beauty. May that 



THE JOY OF LIFE AND THE LIFE OF JOY. 185 

love so freely given to us become the permanent con- 
sciousness of God. It is but to reach forth the hand 
and appropriate it; to open the heart and receive it; 
to open the mind and let in the light; and the full- 
ness of God pours in as the great tides of the sea find 
their way up creek and inlet, until at last the whole 
earth receives it, as the light breaks in the east, making 
glad the highest mountain top and tipping with gold 
the humblest spear of grass. 

In his presence is fullness of joy. In his right hand 
are pleasures forever more. 



THE JUDGMENT SEAT OF CHRIST. 



THE JUDGMENT SEAT OF CHEIST. 



' ' For we mast all appear before the judgment seat of Christ ; that 
every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he 
hath done, whether it be good or bad." 

II Corinthians, v. 10. 

SPOKE to you last Sunday morning on the relig- 
ion of self-respect, taking the incident of Jesus 
with the woman of Samaria, and showing how, 
passing by all forms of worship and all holy places, all 
precedent and all custom and all public opinion, all 
creed and all convention, he led her, as he would fain 
lead us, and as Christianity in its purest form does lead 
us, into the soul itself, there to get the word directly 
from God. For it is in the intuitions of the soul that 
we receive our living commandment from God. 

I wish to carry out that thought yet a little further, 
and to say this : That the religion of self-respect or of 
the soul carries with it obligations that are finer, re- 
sponsibilities that are heavier, than those that are 
ordinarily accepted by religion which leans upon some- 
thing external to the soul. We are not to think that 
going into the soul and taking up the yoke or the 
burden or the commandment which is there imposed 
upon us is any easier work. On the contrary, the 
obligations are finer, the life is necessarily more com- 
plex, the responsibilities are heavier, and the necessities 
of instant obedience are greater, than in ordinary life. 
Where we live by the current opinion, by custom, by 



190 THE JUDGMENT SEAT OF CHRIST. 

precedent, by creed, by commandment of church, life is 
in a certain sense mechanical. We can easily adjust 
ourselves to that. But when, for any reason, you have 
left these things, to retire into your own soul and hear 
what God the Lord shall say unto you, you are dealing 
with voices that are not so loud; you are assuming 
responsibilities that are weightier ; you are recognizing 
obligations that are finer, and your obedience must be 
unhesitating and quick. 

We all remember when we first left the home of 
childhood. There everything had been prepared for 
us ; the commandment of the house, whether voiced or 
not, was present with us ; the responsibility of self- 
support was not on us ; the environment of happy 
conditions was around us. When we left this home 
and went out into the world it was a painful experience. 
No father's voice was there to guide and no mother's 
word to direct. The responsibilities of life were upon 
us. The external conditions which meant so much in 
keeping us noble and true were now changed ; we were 
thrown upon ourselves. There was a painful period in 
trying to adjust one's self to the principles and obliga- 
tions which come from the soul itself. Many wrecks 
have been made of young lives, boys who were good in 
the home, but who, when they went out into the great 
world, were led astray. It is because the habit of self- 
dependence, of looking to a principle instead of to a 
precept, living by a thought instead of by a rule, had 
not been built up within them. They had so depended 
upon the external things of life that when they were 
thrown upon their own resources they failed — failed 
through ignorance and through weakness, and not 
through evil tendencies. A bird that has had its home 
in the wild, when it first leaves a cage in which it has 
been held in captivity, flutters here and there, moves in 
this direction and that, uncertain, troubled. At length 



THE JUDGMENT SEAT OF CHRIST. 191 

lifting itself up into the blue, it feels within it the pres- 
sure of long confined forces, gets its direction, and then 
moves swiftly out into the free and open air. But this 
period of trying to adjust itself to its new conditions, of 
passing from one state to another, is one of great pain. 

The experiment of free government which we are 
making in America is a more difficult thing than the 
conduct of government in Europe. There society is 
fixed and formal ; things go by the laws of precedent 
and custom ; things have been as they are for so many 
hundred years that life in the midst of those fixed and 
formal conditions becomes an external, automatic thing. 
But here, in a government of the people, for the people, 
by the people, each of us is a legislator, each of us is a 
possible executive of the law. Thus our experiment is 
liable to those variations, to those errors and mistakes 
which free life always experiences when it undertakes 
to live by thought and principle instead of by form and 
by rule. 

The difference between Catholicism and Protestantism 
lies largely in this ; that in one a man depends upon the 
voice of the church, and in the other he listens to the 
voice of the soul. Catholicism, old, wise, full of prece- 
dent and beautiful ceremony and form, requires a certain 
automatic obedience which is simple. Protestantism 
throws one in upon the soul itself to listen and to obey. 
Conduct is complex and is accompanied always with 
eccentricities of action and with erratic thinking. In 
the one you have the dependence upon an external 
voice and an external conscience ; in the other, you have 
the free soul assuming obligations, and, obeying them, 
growing stronger. Therefore liberty and reform always 
follow along the lines of the protestant movement, 
while content with things as they are, pity, comfort, 
the amelioration of conditions, but rarely the reform of 
them, follows along the line of the catholic movement. 



192 THE JUDGMENT SEAT OF CHRIST. 

In 1835 to 1840, when the movement of which Emer- 
son was the seer and Theodore Parker was the preacher, 
was set up in New England, men on every side were 
intoxicated by the new principles of life which were 
suddenly revealed to them. It was as if they were 
" drunk with new wine." To look within, to study from 
within, to act from within, produced the strangest va- 
rieties of thought and eccentricities of conduct. But 
the sane mind of Emerson, seeing the truth and acting 
upon it, held itself level without variation in the midst 
of all these clamors and cries about him, emerging 
from it always strong, always true, always faithful. 

The point I wish to make is this : We are not to 
think that in assuming a religion of self-respect, in go- 
ing into the soul for our voices, our visions and our 
commandments, we are, therefore, absolving ourselves 
from obligations and evading responsibilities. On the 
contrary, I have to say that this habit, if it is once set 
up, this privilege, if we so recognize it, carries with it 
yet heavier responsibilities and finer obligations. It 
necessitates a more attent listening to the voices of the 
spirit, and a quick and instant obedience to the revela- 
tions which are made within. 

I propose to show this to you from this word of 
Paul's : " We must all appear before the judgment seat of 
Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his 
body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or 
bad." Nothing is more profitable than to take an old 
and smoothly worn text, which common consent has 
received at a certain value, and to show the heart of 
truth that lies in it; the wonderful God-truth which 
we have so often misapprehended. We must all be 
made manifest, every secret thought and motive, before 
the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may re- 
ceive the things done in his body; not a punishment 
for the things done, not a reward for the things done, 



THE JUDGMENT SEAT OF CHRIST. 193 

but we must receive the things themselves that are 
done there. Now, most of our thinking upon the re- 
sults of our actions is this, that a certain course of ac- 
tion will be rewarded and another course of action will 
be punished. Let us see. Suppose a man commits 
murder out of passion. The natural consequence of 
that is a certain state of mind which makes possible 
another murder. A habit of uncontrolled passion is 
the result of passionate murder. A man is liable to do 
it again. That is the consequence of his action — not a 
punishment, but a natural consequence. The punish- 
ment, the natural punishment that goes along with 
theft, is a state of mind in which one no longer recog- 
nizes the distinction between mine and thine. The 
power of moral distinction is lost, and a sense of obli- 
gation to observe the rights of property is lost. A man 
that steals is receiving the things done in his body. 
A state or condition of nature is set up in him by 
which he does that thing again, and keeps doing it 
until he is checked. On the contrary, the result of all 
right action is power to do another right action, the 
state or condition of mind out of which right action 
proceeds ; what we may call the cultivation or develop- 
ment of the moral nature in that man. Thus we re- 
ceive the things done in the body — not as punishments 
or as rewards, but as consequences that flow out of the 
nature of the acts, and its reaction upon the mind that 
produces them, " according to that he hath done, whether 
it be good or bad." 

The word, the judgment seat of Christ, calls up to 
your mind a certain idea. At once, you mentally pic- 
ture, something like that which is portrayed in that 
great picture of Michael Angelo's in the Sistine Chapel 
of Rome. There the Christ sits in judgment; all kinds 
and conditions of people meet before him ; the charge 
is made, the books are open, the record of a man's life 

13 



194 THE JUDGMENT SEAT OP CHRIST. 

is seen. He is then sent out into punishment or into 
reward. In that terrible picture of Michael Angel o's, 
painted by a master of art, but by a man whose mind 
was so clouded by disappointment that he could not 
see the truth about the matter, Christ sits like Jupiter 
Tonans upon a cloud, so fierce of visage, so denuncia- 
tory of voice, that his mother pleads with him in pity 
for pardon for those whom he is now sentencing. The 
figure in our minds has come to us through long years 
of reception on the part of the Christian church. I 
wish now to examine it in the light of this text, and in 
the light of a better thought. The word itself, "judg- 
ment seat," is the old Roman word "bema.'' When- 
ever the army made a camp, in the midst of the Preto- 
ria n guards the general, the consul, or commanding 
officer, set up a judgment seat, or bema, where he lis- 
tened to and decided upon all causes that were brought 
before him. That is, he tried to do justice, according 
to Roman ideas of justice, and to disentangle the vexed 
questions which were presented for his consideration. 
In the old basilicas of Rome the bema, or judgment 
seat, was placed where some officer properly appointed 
should listen to various causes. ISTow, Rome has given 
to the world its social organization. The contribution 
which the Roman mind has made to civilization, has 
been our present idea of government by law. Among 
oriental peoples, government was by caprice and by 
favor. The judge, or cadi, sat in the market place and 
heard every case, and then decided in favor of or against 
the man. He made a swift personal judgment. ~No 
oriental peoples have had a body of social law by which 
a man might be judged, and in accordance with which 
he might be sentenced or rewarded. But Roman law 
set up in the world the judgment seat — the court of 
justice. Rome's laws were written upon its tables. 
The poorest man might appeal to Csesar for justice. 



THE JUDGMENT SEAT OF CHRIST. 195 

Paul could say, "I appeal to Caesar's judgment seat/' 
and the whole force of the world could not break the 
power of that appeal. Wherever the Roman army 
went, there went Roman justice, the Roman lawyer. 
and the Roman law. The Pandects of Justinian un- 
derlie our present law, as the great granite foundations 
underlie our earth. Rome introduced justice into the 
conquered provinces. Cicero could make his terrible 
complaint against Yerres. Clodius, a prince, could be 
brought to the iudsrment seat and condemned. Xo 
man so great but what he must appear before that judg- 
ment seat, if the humblest man that he had defrauded 
or oppressed brought a charge against him. That was 
the magnificent contribution of Rome to this world; 
our modern idea of government by law of justice. 

Paul knew this. He himself had had occasion to ap- 
peal to Caesar; he knew the justice with which Roman 
law was administered. And so he uses it as an illustra- 
tion : " We must all appear before the court of justice, 
the judgment seat of Christ." We all must give an ac- 
count of the things done in the body, and receive the 
consequences of these acts. He used it as an illustra- 
tion, understand. He wanted to make them see that 
we were spiritually accountable for every thought and 
word. And this thought of moral accountability is one 
of the greatest things we can conceive of. Emanuel 
Kant, the great philosopher, said, " There are two things 
that fill me with awe — the stars that move without 
haste and without rest, and the sense of moral account- 
ability that is in man. The lesson, then, that Paul 
wishes to teach is this — the accountability of the soul 
for its action and for its thought to the great Master, 
Christ. 

Xow, an illustration is not the truth itself, but it is 
an attempt to explain the truth. If we lose sight of 
this and lift an illustration up as if it were an awful 



196 THE JUDGMENT SEAT OP CHRIST. 

fact, we confine ourselves within the limits of that illus- 
tration, and lose the great truth which one sought to . 
illustrate by it. And so, in the process of years, the 
fact that Roman law and government was simply an 
illustration of the truth of the moral accountability of 
man was lost sight of. The illustration itself was as- 
sumed to be a great truth ; that at some day, and at 
some appointed time, by due process of law, in the 
presence of Jesus Christ, with prosecutors here and 
advocates there, with witnesses summoned, and parch- 
ments unrolled, and books opened, we should give an 
account of that which we had said and done; there to 
receive the sentence " depart, ye cursed," or " come, ye 
blessed." Thus a simple illustration, a court form pe- 
culiar to Roman law, has been made the very founda- 
tion stone of a superstructure of our modern conception 
of the judgment day. 

This was reinforced by art. Between the sinner and 
the Judge stands the church. The church sought to 
mitigate the force of this sentence, to plead for the 
sinner. But at last it became the very necessary condi- 
tion of the existence of the church that this theory of 
the judgment seat should be preached. Art was called 
to its aid. The terrible sculptures of Nicholas upon 
the baptistry in Pisa tell how art lent itself to the 
church to picture out in stone this old time illustration, 
which was now assumed to be an awful fact. On the 
canvas of Michael Angelo the same truth is portrayed ; 
while Dante added to it the terrible pictures of his 
Inferno, and Milton his Paradise Lost. Our modern 
idea of the judgment, then, is not a biblical thing. It is 
made up of the court forms of Pome ; it is made up of 
the pictures and sculptures of ancient art, added to by 
the lurid imagination of the disappointed Dante, and 
by Milton, sad, broken, discouraged and embittered. 



THE JUDGMENT SEAT OF CHRIST. 197 

It is a long way from that word and thought of Paul 
to our modern idea of the judgment seat of Christ. 
But what did Paul mean by it? This : The judgment 
seat of Christ is the soul itself; those thoughts and 
feelings which are awakened within us by Christian 
living. In Tennyson's poem of "Sea Dreams/' the 
story is told of a poor city clerk whose little savings 
had been misappropriated by a man, " with all his con- 
science and one eye askew," oily and plausible and false 
at heart, oozing " all over with fat aifectionate smile 
that makes the widow lean." The man has seen his 
little savings lost and realizes what it means. What 
wonder that in his bitterness he denounces the man as 
a hypocrite, and calls down upon him all possible pain 
and punishment? But the gentle wife who lies beside 
him says : 

"His gain is loss ; for he who wrongs his friend 
Wrongs himself more, and ever bears about 
A silent court of justice in his breast, 
Himself the judge and jury, and himself 
The prisoner at the bar, ever condemned." 

That is what Paul meant. The judgment seat of 
Christ is your moral consciousness. It is built up out 
of those convictions and ideas that have come to us 
along the line of Christian living. In this silent court 
we are judge, and we are jury, and we are the pris- 
oner at the bar, condemned or confirmed in that 
which we have done. The Roman Court was not sim- 
ply a place of punishment ; it was the place of the ad- 
judication of entangled questions, the smoothing out of 
things that could not be understood. This silent court 
that is within us, Christ's judgment seat, before it comes 
every act and every thought. Here are the ancient 
laws within us, written upon the living tables of the 



198 THE JUDGMENT SEAT OF CHRIST. 

heart. There is no delay ; no postponement of action ; 
there is no change of venue; no question as to jurisdic- 
tion ; there is no quibble on disputed points ; no delay 
in the sentence — ourselves the judge and jury, and our- 
selves the prisoner or the appealer at that bar. 

The ancient laws of truth and justice and mercy,, 
which were a part of us from the beginning, which 
antedate the very creation of the world itself, they are 
there, silent judges, part of ourselves; and they pass 
their sentence upon every motive. They help us to 
distinguish between the right and the wrong, the noble 
and the base. If, from that august presence, with the 
judgment of that court upon an action, we turn and do 
the wrong thing, we are brought back to the same bar 
and are instantly condemned. We can not work out 
that sentence. The consequences of it become a part of 
the soul itself. If you have chosen to do the base 
thing, you are base, and baser and more degraded you 
become. If from that silent and august presence you 
go, with its judgment written upon your consciousness, 
and obey it^ there is no halt or hesitation in the reward 
that comes. The good thing that you have done, that 
you are. From that moment }^ou are stronger, truer, 
more helpful, more godlike. 

It is from this silent court of justice, which is set up 
within the heart, that there come these finer obligations. 
As it is a more complex thing to live in America than it 
is in France or Germany or England, it is a more com- 
plex thing to be a Christian when you depend upon the 
voice that is within than if you are listening to the 
voice that is without. You do not ask the opinion of 
the market upon the transaction. What do I think 
myself upon it? You do not wait to see the conse- 
quence of it, whether you may evade it, whether honesty 
is the best policy or not. You know whether it is 
honest or whether it is dishonest, whether it is noble or 



THE JUDGMENT SEAT OF CHRIST. 199 

whether it is base. This is the silent court of justice 
which God sets up in every human heart. 

This is serious thinking. The sooner we know that 
we are responsible to ourselves, and more and more 
responsible through ever increasing complexity, not to 
ten commandments, but to ten times a hundred com- 
mandments, so much the sooner shall we grow into the 
likeness of him upon whose sensitive soul these 
thoughts of God impressed themselves, and who lived 
to the level of the thing that he thought. 

Now, while in all this there is a certain danger of 
erratic action or eccentric thought, we are saved from 
this by obedience. For see ! Nature at all times uses 
obedience to the will of God, or the law of nature, which 
is the same thing, in order to produce conformity to the 
type. For example, you know how many varieties 
there are of the chrysanthemum. There are thousands 
of them that have these strange variations of form. 
We would not recognize them, and yet they are all 
developments of one simple, natural flower. But these 
developments and changes are not natural, they are 
artificial. They are made by the caprice of man. The 
florist finds a certain demand for a new form ; there- 
fore, he takes some little variation and emphasizes it by 
natural selection, until at last he has brought out a 
varied form. Yet nature, in a certain sense, does not 
like this. It is interference. Nature tries to keep the 
type always distinct, so that you may know a thing is 
an oyster and not a flower; to make the lines of dis- 
tinction sharp enough to allow of variety and beauty, 
but always conformity to the type. Nature, if let alone, 
if the florists would stop for twelve months, would 
cause most of these varieties to disappear, and in their 
place would be seen a few varieties only of the original 
type, where there may be a thousand now. If there 
was no attempt to retain this erraticism or eccentricity 



200 THE JUDGMENT SEAtf OF CHRIST. 

of form, it would revert to its original condition. Con- 
formity to the general type, to the great principle and 
idea, is made by obedience to the laws of nature. A 
crystal always forms in the same way, whether it is of 
snow or of salt. A flower grows on the same general 
plan when not interfered with. 

Erraticism of human conduct and the eccentricity of 
human opinion result from listening to all the varied 
voices and opinions of the world ; while conformity to 
one great type, of which Jesus Christ is the expression, 
comes to us by obedience to the free, simple, natural 
laws of truth, justice and mercy. Instant and quick 
obedience to these dictates of the soul builds up a char- 
acter after the image of Jesus Christ, the noblest ideal 
conception which we have of humanity. But listening 
to the thousand voices of public opinion ; trying to 
conform ourselves to this rule of action or to that ; to 
believe with that creed or with this, results in all these 
varied, errant forms of life and thought with which we 
are so familiar. 

Therefore, coming ever into this silent court of jus- 
tice in the soul, obeying the decision of the silent judge 
there, the ideal Christ, we grow to be like him. Like 
him, not like each other ; not like this Church or that 
precedent, but like him who lived truth, and justice, 
and mercy. Conformity, obedience to the law of God 
that is within us, produces conformity to the Christ, 
historical or ideal, whom, " not having seen we love." 
Does any one dare to say that this is an easy thing to 
do? It is harder than it is to live as precedent deter- 
mines, or as custom affirms. But the resultant man is 
strong and self-reliant, his word is as good as his bond. 
Wherever he goes he carries his conscience with him. 
His silent court of justice continually passes an affirm- 
ation upon his actions, saying to him, "that was right," 
and giving him the increased power to speak another 



THE JUDGMENT SEAT OF CHRIST. 201 

truth; to do another act of justice; and to show yet 
more comprehensive and cheerful mercy. 

The condition of this higher life is obedience to the 
best you know at any time, no matter what it costs ; 
and the result of it is a Christ-like character. There- 
fore, this word of Paul has nothing whatever to do 
with that common and current idea of a day of judg- 
ment. The day of judgment is this instant and mo- 
ment of time. The place of judgment is this soul of 
man which passes judgment. The judge is the voice 
of God, which speaks through our intuitions and moral 
perceptions. The sentence is that which we pass upon 
ourselves as we sink lower into baseness, or rise higher 
into the character of truth and justice. We are our 
own severest judges, passing judgment upon thought 
and word and act. So shall *we be like him who was 
truth and justice and mercy. 

And now let this word dwell in us, not as the sound 
of something that is said, but as the revelation of some- 
thing that is true; for man can not say to man other 
than that which man can say to himself. I can but hold 
the mirror up to nature and let each one see the truth 
of his own soul. If this be true, it is true because each 
one affirms it in consciousness. We are to look within, 
go within, to this silent court of justice. There God 
speaks through our feelings and our deep desires, our 
high aspirations and our sense of justice. Let us ap- 
peal to that court and take its adjudication upon the 
worth of our actions ; let us obey implicitly, that which 
we hear there, as its last and final word. So shall we 
become more sensitive to the formative forces of life as 
flowers are sensitive to the great forming laws of na- 
ture, and we shall be built up in beauty and truth, and 
strength and grace after the image of the perfect man, 
Jesus Christ, our brother and our friend. 



THE GATE CALLED BEAUTIFUL. 



THE GATE CALLED BEAUTIFUL. 

Lame from our birth ; and daily we are brought, 
And at the gate called Beautiful are laid : 

Sometimes its wonder makes us free and glad ; 
Sometimes its grandeur makes us half afraid. 

This is the gate called Beautiful ; it swings 
To music sweeter than was heard that day 

When St. Cecilia, rapt in ecstacy, 

Heard through her trance the angelic roundelay. 

And at this gate, not at wide intervals, 

Are we, lame from our birth, laid tenderly, 

But daily ; and not one day passes by 
That we look not upon this mystery. 

Gate of the Temple ? Surely it is that ! 

It opens not into vacuity ; 
For all its beauty, it is not so fair 

But that a greater beauty there can be. 

Thy beauty, O my Father ! All is Thine ; 

But there is beauty in Thyself, from whence 
The beauty Thou hast made doth ever flow 

In streams of never-failing: affluence. 



i s 



Thou art the Temple ! and though I am lame, — 
Lame from my birth, and shall be till I die, — 

I enter through the gate called Beautiful, 

And am alone with Thee, O Thou Most High ! 

— J. W. Chadwick. 



THE GATE CALLED BEACTIFCL. 



imd tftey brought a man lame from hit biri}<.. • 

y at t}& gats, tffht Urmple which, u calkd Beautiful." 

Acts iii, 2. 

C^> HE beautiful gate r .i the temple of which * 

\Q Jews were particularly proud, had been built 
' '•'^ for them by Herod the King, c it of Corin::.:a:. 

brass. And at this gate thei - laid a lame man who 

was made whole again by the power and sympathy 

that lay in the h :hese new Christians. 

When I a^k myself! as I have had occasion 1 
quently, what is the thing you are trying to do and 
the word you are trying to say here. I answer thus: 
I am trying to interpret life in this world to the 
men and women that are in it; I am trying to make 
them understand, as far as I can, what this world is 
and what the will of God in it is. There are manv 
ws of this world and of life in it. 

The Greeks. world int 

and tb word Cosmos, u a word which means the 

beautiful, as the word Nature means that which is con- 
tinually becoming or growing into some new and won- 
derful strength, and the ed life in it. The 
zreat AchiL I that he would rather be a dog on 
earth than reign a king in heaven: and of all ti 
people of the past the re none that so dreaded to 
die as the Greeks. The Romans, stur ^ng and 



206 THE GATE CALLED BEAUTIFUL. 

insensitive, strode across this world, finding in it only 
a place for the exercise of power and the enjoyment of 
sensual pleasure; while the Jews saw in it a serious 
business, a place where conduct should be ruled by 
righteousness. The Christians of the Middle Ages 
feared it, hated it, and sought to be rid of it, and life 
was one long attempt to escape from its tainted atmos- 
phere and its entangling temptations. 

And something of this thought of the medieval 
Christian lingers on in our own religious thought and 
literature. We have taken the word " world" as being 
put over against the spirit, and as being associated 
only with that which is evil ; and we have urged the 
people to fi.ee from the world, and to love not the 
world, neither the things which are in the world ; and 
have covered the whole of nature and of life with this 
idea, that all that lies outside of the church is somehow 
penetrated by evil and makes for wrong to unsuspecting 
and innocent souls. To others, the world seems to be 
a place for the exercise of activity, and life simply 
seems one long grasping for power, or search for 
pleasure, or means of passing a comfortable existence 
between birth and death. 

But a new and a deeper thought has been gaining 
possession of the world during these last decades, and 
we are coming to look upon this world as the gate to a 
beautiful temple. Nature lends itself to the enjoyment 
and use of the human spirit, and does not seek to ob- 
struct it. The world is good and helpful, and not bad, 
hurtful and obstructive. Society is in its making, and 
is not so much a lost thing as it is an incomplete and 
unfinished thing. Life is finding the meaning of God in 
this world and the use of one's own power and faculty. 
This world in all its variety and its beauty does not be- 
long to a few, but belongs to all. This world is to that 
which lies beyond it as the gate is to the temple, a 



THE GATE CALLED BEAUTIFUL. 207 

beautiful entrance, through which glimpses are given 
to us of a greater beauty that lies beyond. This is the 
thought that underlies this poem of Mr. Chadwick, 
The Gate Called Beautiful, and it is the view of the 
deepest, tenderest thought of this day. 

A storm comes and covers the heavens with its 
-clouds; rumbling thunders are heard and hurtling 
lightning flashes are seen, but after it there is breathed 
a sweeter and a fresher air; the mountain tops come 
•out in clearer outline, the birds burst forth in song, the 
grass takes on a tenderer green, and every flower, washed 
clear from its dust, shines more beautiful — so when 
storms pass across the face of society, while they seem 
to be terrible tempests which frighten men, and for a 
time silence all sweeter sounds, yet when they have 
passed away, behold, all things have become new. 

Thus it was when that terrible storm of the eighteenth 
•century, known to us as the French Revolution, had 
come and gone. When it had died away, men became 
•conscious that a new world had somehow been born, 
new ideas were in people's minds, new feelings were in 
their hearts. Everything that is about us now takes 
its meaning, its color, its quality, from that great storm 
that swept across human society. There was seen to 
be a new science, a new literature, a new art, a new 
education, a new religion and a new humanity. All 
this had been coming before. The changes were going 
on, had been going on for a half century, but we were 
not conscious of them until this storm had passed 
away and everything stood out clear, well defined and 
beautiful, after the storm had wrought what seemed its 
terrible work. There was a new literature. You may 
•search in vain in medieval literature or in anything be- 
fore the French Revolution, for a poem like Coleridge's 
"Hymn of Praise to Mont Blanc," or anything like 
Wordsworth's " Lines on Tintern Abbey," or anything 



208 THE GATE CALLED BEAUTIFUL. 

that resembles the songs of Robert Burns. They were 
not possible before the French Revolution. 

All these, and the vast number that followed them, 
are new views of the world and nature which lies about 
us, are new views of human life with which we have 
to do. There was a new art born at that time. In all 
the paintings of the period before the Revolution, there 
was nothing of that tender appreciation of nature that 
shows itself in modern landscape art, which was a birth 
of that time. JSTature took on a new form and a new 
beauty, and the human spirit found a pleasure in por- 
traying it. 

Of old, the human spirit rapt in devotion, saints suf- 
fering martyrdoms, Jerome taking the last communion, 
St. Lawrence upon his gridiron — these, and such things 
as these, were the theme of the painter's pencil. But 
modern art is characterized by a love of the beautiful 
in nature. It sees in the flower and in the tree, in the 
waterfall and in the mountain view, something that 
appeals to the deepest thoughts. Turner in England, 
and Constable and Claude Lorraine in France, taught 
the world what an imagination God has. After them 
came Jean Francois Millet to tell us what beauty there 
is in the shepherdesses of Burgundy, the diggers of 
potatoes, and the tossers of hay. 

Then there was a new science born. The old 
mechanical views of God gave place to new ones. 
Creation came by growth and imperceptible changes 
carried on in the silence of vast spaces, changes, the 
meaning of which is only beginning to dawn upon us — 
the processes of nature, the reign of law in mote, and 
star, and sun, and flower. Men saw that while on the 
one hand there was no chance, on the other hand there 
had never been a creative fiat; that everything had its 
place and its use ; that nothing walked on aimless feet \ 



THE GATE CALLED BEAUTIFUL. 209 

that plant, and quadruped, and bird, by one music were 
enchanted, and by one Deity were stirred. 

There is a new education. The Emile of Rousseau, 
written in the latter half of the eighteenth century, is* 
the Magna Charta of modern education ; all that is 
characteristic of modern methods finds its utterance 
there. 

There was a new religion born. The very word re- 
ligion at that time had lost its meaning. It meant a 
monkish life; to be religious was to retire into a con- 
vent. A religious house was a nunnery or monastery. 
It was not possible to live the religious life outside of 
that. 

But new hopes and aspirations awakened; a con- 
sciousness of human brotherhood was felt ; social dreams 
took possession of people ; reforms were initiated ; char- 
ities were begun; the human Christ replaced the Christ 
of theology and ecclesiasticism, and there was a new 
humanity. Man as man, independent of class, or posi- 
tion or birth, was seen to have a value in the sight of 
God, and had to be taken account of by governments. 
All our social dreams and reforms which we are now 
working out had their conscious beginnings at that 
time. In that troubled nightmare the first rude forms 
of our perfected society were beginning to shape them- 
selves. I can trace every charity back to about that 
time, when Pinel first struck the chains from the wrists 
of a poor lunatic girl, when Romilly initiated the re- 
forms in the criminal code, when the care of the blind, 
and the deaf and dumb, and of little children was taken 
up by society. Strange that we should see in the midst 
of such rioting, and cruelty, and ignorance, such fair 
forms of blessed influence waking, as if the Son of Man 
were walking in this fiery furnace ! Our social schemes 
and political ideas had their birth then. It was from 
Rousseau that the Declaration of Independence took 

14 



m 



210 THE GATE CALLED BEAUTIFUL. 

its shape ; the most significant revolutionary document 
since Jesus Christ stood on Mount Tabor and uttered 
the Sermon on the Mount. 

All these things, the new literature, art, science, edu- 
cation, religion and humanity, make up what we call the 
new idea of the world ; differing from Hebrew, Greek, 
Roman and medieval, and the ordinary commercial 
idea. This new view of the world, let me state it again, 
is this : The world exists for the uses of the human 
spirit, and is not a place of evil. It -is not a place to 
escape from, it is not a place for selfish attainment, it 
is not a place for the avaricious scramble for wealth, 
but it is the home of the human spirit during one of 
its many experiences. It is a house of life, made beau- 
tiful for the spirit; it is the temporary home of every 
child of man between birth and death ; and it belongs 
to man, not by any proprietary right, but for possession 
and use. 

When St. Bernard rode through Italy into Switz- 
erland, he kept his eyes fixed upon the path over 
which his mule was traveling and muttered to himself 
a Latin prayer or Latin hymn of his breviary, never 
taking any notice of the wonderful color that played 
about Mont Rosa or the exquisite blue of Lake Con- 
stance. How different this is from the modern, from 
Wordsworth, with his reverential sense of the " Pres- 
ence that disturbs him with the joy of animated 
thought ; " Tennyson, bending over a sedgy pool, full 
of rich and beautiful life, and whispering to himself, 
" What an imagination God has ; " Ruskin, looking from 
the Jura Mountains upon the vales where springing 
flowers and flowing streams had been dyed by the deep 
colors of human endurance, and valor and virtue. 

This world has become to us this gate that is called 
beautiful. The old hymn called life a pilgrimage. Life 
is no longer a pilgrimage between two eternities. Life 



THE GATE CALLED BEAUTIFUL. 211 

is no longer stopping as in an inn over night, where you 
have no relation to host or guest. Life is no city of 
destruction and no escape from it, such as Bunyan pic- 
tures in the Pilgrim's Progress. Life is not a market 
where we buy and sell, and each enriches himself by 
exchanges. Life is enjoyment of the beauty that is in 
this world, and the employment of the powers and fac- 
ulties of the spirit. Man is coming back again to the 
old Eden, the garden from which the mist rose and in 
which he was put to till it and to dress it in beauty. 

In the early days of 1849 and '50, men went to Cali- 
fornia, drawn there by the reports of the wonderous 
wealth so easily gathered from the bed of a stream or 
knocked .from the breast of a mountain; and they had 
no thought but that they should stay a year or two and 
go back with their riches then to enjoy their lives. 
Years came and years went, the secret but unsatisfied 
thirst for gold still held them there, and their homes 
were left behind them. Still they searched for wealth, 
but never planted a tree or turned the sod or grew a 
flower or built a permanent residence. It is only 
within the last few years that California has been looked 
upon as a place where men and women were to live, to 
beautif}' it, to enrich it and to enjoy life within it. 

So, in our lives, it is only within a few years, within 
a half century, or a few generations, that it has come 
to the consciousness of man that Cod ever meant for 
men to live in this world as though it were a home ; 
and to love it and to make it beautiful and comfortable 
for themselves and for others. IS"o man can be satisfied 
with simply making money; no soul can be happy by 
simply escaping hell. Life was not meant to make 
money with, and life is not an escape from destruction. 
There is just as much selfishness in seeking the salva- 
tion of your own soul, to the disregard of the minute 



212 THE GATE CALLED BEAUTIFUL. 

comforts of the men and women that are about you, as 
if you were an Alexander making the world red with 
blood. 

Life in this world ought to be a pleasure, not a 
pain. There is just as much a duty in happiness as 
happiness in duty. It is possible to have pleasure fol- 
low life just as a brook follows a road, glistening and 
tumbling in tumultuous joy, or lying in quiet shallows 
and shadows, now lost to sight, now coming out again. 
Life ought to be a pleasure to every one that lives. Hap- 
piness is the heritage of the human spirit, and where- 
soever there is unhappiness, it is the duty of the strong 
man to arise and ask : Who and what have done this 
thing ? The cry of the little child must arouse not only 
the pity but the indignation of right-minded men and 
women to ask what has robbed this little child of its 
life and its song; who has stolen from it its happiness, 
and what is my duty therein ? 

I say to you, from the experience of the years that I 
have come through, that I have had a happy life, and I 
know why it has been happy. Take the heat of this 
summer. It has been the best summer I have had for 
many years. It has been to some the most uncomfort- 
able summer. But when first the thought came of the 
possibility of taking the children out to Fairview Park, 
from that moment every hour of the bright day has 
been a pleasant one, simply because it was conferring 
a pleasure upon some one else ; and it was not hot, the 
hour was not long, the duties were pleasures, the gath- 
ering of the money and the preparing of things was 
simply the extension of pleasure. This is but an illus- 
tration of life. Pleasure comes to those who give pleas- 
ure, happiness to those who seek to make other people 
happy. Any one who makes the pleasure or happiness 
of another possible, will find a joy in life and will rightly 
interpret this world. Make some one glad, and all at 



THE GATE CALLED BEAUTIFUL. 213 

once the gloom is gone and the light plays. We are 
thus put in touch with the spirit of God, which is the 
good and the beautiful, and we know the spirit in which 
this world was made. And you can not understand 
anything until you know the spirit in which it was 
made. We share with God the joy of his creation, and 
the joy of his happy, helpful business. 

The life of every minister, if he has a good theology, 
if he believes in the thought of GTod, and the beauty 
and bounty of God, ought to be one long happiness. 
No shadows of dread could ever creep over him; no 
pictures of people suffering in hell, or in cold aliena- 
tion, could ever come to him. He sees the divine move- 
ment from dust up to star, and from poor, starved 
spirit to beneficent, kindly angel. It is all part of one 
great beautiful plan, and he stands in admiration, 
watching God, as he unfolds the plan of his universe, 
as you have bent with wonder when a night-bloom- 
ing cereus opens the secret of its heart to the stars of 
night. 

You will find a pleasure in people when you come to 
look at them, not through the glasses of some bargain, 
not through the dogmatism of some creed, not through 
the misconception of some heart; but when you have 
looked at them as Jesus looked at them, in their deform- 
ity still carrying the lineaments of beauty of the child- 
ren of God. When Jesus Christ wanted a child of 
which to say, " Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven," it 
did not make any difference what child he took, one 
was as good as another for his word, Syrian babe or 
child of the High Priest of God. 

You will find a great beauty in nature when you come 
to look at it with a sympathetic eye. Everything has 
part and place in this wonderful, beautiful universe. 
You will find a meaning in history, as the plan of God 



214 THE GATE CALLED BEAUTIFUL. 

unfolds itself, and the power that makes for righteous- 
ness moves toward its irresistible completion. You will 
find pleasure in friendship. You will find pleasure in 
books, which are the stored-up life-blood of master spir- 
its for the ages that are to come. You will find pleasure 
in studying industry and commerce, which are God's 
methods for -the economic distribution of the products 
of nature. You will find pleasure in travel, going over 
this world to see what is in it and to report it, possibly, 
to questioning generations that are to come. You will 
find pleasure in music, broken chords and utterances of 
the divine spirit; and in art, more beautiful at times 
than nature even, because it is the ideal and the perfect 
which nature has never reached. You will find pleas- 
ure in labor and in work if it is useful; and in rest if 
it is earned. You will find pleasure in the thought of 
the progress of God through the centuries, and of the 
destiny of man, until in this beautiful world, stimu- 
lated by this thought, that there is nothing common as 
there is nothing unclean, the mere dust that is under 
your feet becomes instinct as it holds the promise and 
the potency of a wonderful life. 

But my enjoyment of life is but a suggestion that this 
same enjoyment belongs to every one and lies within 
the possibility of every one. There is not any one of 
you here to-day, howsoever dark your sin or shameful 
your history, but has this possibility of .the enjoyment 
of God's beautiful, bountiful world. I am interested in 
the labor question, as you know — in the human ques- 
tion, which is larger than the labor question — for it 
seems to me that this beauty and bounty of God be- 
longs to everybody, and I can not bear to think that 
there shall be one person into whose ears God's music 
shall not steal, and into whose eyes and soul God's 
beauty shall not find its way. I find no pleasure in a 
solitary enjoyment. The book I read I want somebody 



THE GATE CALLED BEAUTIFUL. 215 

else to read. The song I bear I wish somebody else to 
hear. The story at which I laugh I wish to retail again. 
The view I have from mountain or over ocean, I wish 
that others could have. It multiplies the pleasure when 
two and more see it. Xo man can he saved alone. Xo 
man can eniov this world alone. The sun and moon 
that shine for all, the common flowers, the common 
wind, the things that are common to us all, are the 
things that give us the most happiness. I recognize 
this feeling in an increasing number of people: the dis- 
satisfaction with their own enjoyment of life, because 
so many do not find an equal pleasure. 

And this human movement, always remember, has 
two sides. On the one hand, there is the reaching for- 
ward of all to enjoy that which is now enjoyed by a 
few, and on the other hand there is the proffer of this 
enjoyment which the few have to the many. There is 
a growing surprise in the world at the fact of solitary 
possession. How came I to have this thing, and you 
not to have it ? is the question we are asking ourselves, 
and the discontent of the fortunate is more significant 
than the discontent of the unfortunate. When we 
think of a vacation, we wish that other people had a 
vacation as well; and what pleasure we take in seeing 
little children in the fresh-air camp at Fairview. Love 
longs to share its treasures always. Phillip says to Na- 
thaniel, We have found Jesus which is the Christ : come 
and see him. And whenever a child rinds a new flower 
or has a new doll, she comes bounding out of the house 
with, Come and see. That is the Christian attitude — 
Come and see. 

It was feared in the old time that the life of the world 
would win men from heaven. I do not find it so. The 
new thought looks upon the world as an experience of 
the human spirit. It is but the gate of the temple : we 
are to remember that. Emerson tells us of two men. 



216 THE GATE CALLED BEAUTIFUL. 

business men, who were searching for evidences of im- 
mortality, and as they met each would ask the other : 
" Have you any light on that question that we were talk- 
ing about ? " and each one answered : " Nothing." How 
could they have? How can a man immersed in busi- 
ness see it? How can a man simply dealing with 
affairs see it ? He can not. He is as blind as a mole 
that is brought up out of the earth into God's sunlight ; 
his eyes are accustomed to other things. Evidences not 
for him are seen by others. 

Frank Buckland, the naturalist, loved God and little 
fishes, and thought there would surely be a place in 
eternity where he could pursue that work which he 
and God loved so much. 

And Emerson, loving his boy Waldo, says : 

1 ' What is excellent, 
As God lives, is permanent. 
Hearts are dust. Hearts' loves remain. 
Heart's love shall meet thee again." 

Newton, whose mind was ever voyaging out over vast 
seas of space alone, knew that he should not spend eter- 
nity gathering only pebbles. 

Mothers know that they shall see their own again. 
Listen. "That night, before we went to bed, the child- 
ren were allowed to go in and kiss their mother good- 
night. This privilege had been denied them lately, 
and their hearts responded with joy to the invitation. 
Mamma was better or she could not see them. She 
was very pale when they saw her, but smiling, and her 
first words were, 'I am going on a journey.' 'Will 
you take us with you ? ' said the children. ' No, it is a 
long, long journey.' 'Mamma is going to the south,' 
said one. 'I know the doctor has ordered it. She will 
get -well there.' ' I am going to a far distant country, 
farther even than the far distant south is ; but I am 



THE GATE CALLED BEAUTIFUL. 217 

not coming back.' 'Are yon going alone ? ' ' No, my 
physician is going with me. Kiss me good-bye.' In 
the morning she was gone. When the children awoke 
their father told them of the beantifnl conn try where 
their mother had gone, and in which she had safely 
arrived while they slept. How did she go ? Who came 
for her? 'The chariot of Israel and the horsemen.' 
There are people who wonder at the peace and happi- 
ness expressed in the faces of those motherless children. 
When asked about their mother, they say to us, ' She 
is gone on a journey,' and every night and morning 
they read in the guide-book of that land where she 
now lives whose inhabitants shall nevermore sa}% I am 
sick, and where God wipes away all tears from their 
eyes." 

Now, this appreciation of the world that is and the 
world that is to come, the world beautiful at the gate 
of which we stand, and the world, wonderfully beauti- 
ful, of which we get glimpses, this is the new thought 
of the new age. And it is a thought that has come to 
us from Jesus of Nazareth. It is the light which his 
life has cast upou the world that has made us love 
these flowers, that has made us love little children, that 
has made ns love common men and women. When 
you take np a lily and think that God's providence is 
' there, when you pick up a pebble from the shore, 
and think that God's providence is there, and when 
down in a dew-drop or drop of water you see God 
feeding the animalcule, you can not doubt his presence 
or his power. When you look at his rising or setting 
sun in beauty, when you see the common faces of men 
becoming beautiful as a new thought of life comes to 
them, nothing can be ugly to you any more. When a 
little brown Syrian baby becomes, as it were, one of 
the gates of the kingdom of heaven, has a right of en- 
trance there which strong men may plead for and not 



218 THE GATE CALLED BEAUTIFUL. 

find, then no child can ever be common ; then the light 
that never was on sea or land, the consummation of 
the poet's dream, the light that falls from setting suns 
and gems the green earth and shines in common daily 
faces of men and women, and makes a divine beauty 
upon children's faces, is seen to be the light of God that 
is reflected upon nature and upon humanity from the 
face of Jesus Christ. 



And now let thy blessing be upon us, as we sepa- 
rate; go with us where we go, and stay with us where 
we stay ; watch over us by night and defend us by day j 
give us health of our bodies and sanity of our minds ; 
hope and courage and resolution and strength, through 
Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. 



BEARING WITNESS TO THE TRUTH. 



220 BEARING WITNESS TO THE TRUTH. 



Our heavenly Father, once again we come into this 
presence. No fear drives us, but love draws us here, 
memories of past days, hopes of revelations yet to 
come, the attraction that the truth has always for those 
who seek the right, the fascination of the mystery of 
existence, the sense of something that is interfused with 
our life, that is deeper than our thinking. 

We come to face the great facts of life, we come 
wearied with the struggle, beaten back and disap- 
pointed with the effort, to get new strength again. 
Bearing the burdens which life imposes upon us, and 
which our ignorance imposes upon us, we come for 
strength. We hear the call of Christ which sounds 
through the Centuries, " Come unto me all ye that labor 
and are heavy-laden and I will give you life." It is not 
rest we need so much as the quickening of life to bear 
the burden aright. And now we pray thee that there 
may be to every one that is here the answer to the 
secret wish of the soul ; for, as thou hast provided for 
us the sleep that has rested and the food that has nour- 
ished, so thou wilt provide for us all needed strength 
and hope and comfort. 

Each heart know T s its own bitterness ; a stranger can 
not intermeddle therewith. One heart can not answer 
for all; one heart can not bear the sorrows of all. 
Each one comes to thee out of his own experience. 
Thou canst answer all the questions of life and bear all 
the burdens. So thou canst meet each one of us to- 
day, those who are feeling their way out into the light 
and those that are homeless and forsaken and need a 
friend, and the fathers and mothers of little dead chil- 
dren who bear the ache and the loss always with them, 
and the freshly bruised and broken hearts. Thou canst 






BEARING WITNESS TO THE TRUTH. 221 

explain the great mystery of life. Thou canst give us 
the assurance of life that is not affected by death. All 
the questions which the mind asks and the heart feels, 
thou canst answer. Each carries the secret of his own 
life w T ithin him. Thou knowest all ; thou canst answer 
all ; the aspirations of young manhood, the shame that 
comes through lose truth and virtue, all the bitterness of 
disappointment and the sense of loss which dearh brings. 
Thou dost not answer the question of curiosity, but 
thou dost answer the question of life ; and in obedi- 
ence to the thing we know comes the answer to the 
thing we do not know. Living to the level of the high- 
est thoughts, we climb those mountains of vision from 
which we see far and wide. In faithfulness to small 
duties, w r e come to be a part of the nature of things, 
with the assurance in us of life that is rooted fast in 
God. 

We ask thy blessing now upon our minds that they 
may have the light given to them ; upon our hearts, 
that their feelings may be purified, and the passions 
and desires may be sublimated above that which is 
coarse and earthly, leaving the pure flame of love burn- 
ing in the home and household. We ask that we may 
not simply search for thy truth curiously, for not to 
that searcher shall be given ; but light shall be given 
us for the next thing, enough light to see what to do, 
enough light for obedience. 

Now, may thy blessing be upon the stranger that is 
with us ; may he hear the accustomed sounds ; may the 
same God meet and greet him, and as over him are the 
same familiar stars, so the great truths shall be in his 
heart, informing his mind and fixing his purpose; and 
bless those he loves, and keep their eyes from tears and 
their feet from stumbling, and their hearts from heavi- 
ness. Bless those that are called to mourn, Thou 
Refuge in times of disaster, strengthen such, and give 



222 BEARING WITNESS TO THE TRUTH. 

them patience to bear the pain. Give us the conscious- 
ness of life that is not affected by death, but only 
changed in form and not as to the real content of spirit. 
Bless the little children ; make them speak truth, 
love virtue and do justice. Bless young men and wo- 
men « make them hate base and low T things ; make them 
conscious that they are sent into this world to bear wit- 
ness to the truth. Be with the men and women who 
have to bear the burden of life and can not see the 
issue of their lives. Give us enough light to know we 
are doing the best we can, and that consciousness that 
•comes through right action. We bless thee for the old 
that linger with us ; may they stay long, fading out as 
the beauty of the setting sun, the afterglow rising up 
into the heavens, leaving us with the memory of a long 
and a beautiful day. Go with the sorrowful and 
broken, the unchurched and the forgotten. 

And, our heavenly Father, when the clear, pure flame 
of Christian love shall burn on the altars of our 
churches, then we shall have the common people 
coming to hear again the voice that once won them 
because it loved them, the common people hearing 
gladly because his voice was the voice of grace and the 
word of truth. Amen. 



BEARING WITNESS TO THE TRUTH. 



" To this end was I>born, and for this cause came I into the 
world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. ' ' 

John xviii. 37. 

(^|HIS scene in Pilate's judgment hall is one of rare 
interest and significance. You who have seen the 
great picture of " Christ before Pilate " can bring 
before your minds this scene in somewhat of its realistic 
detail. You see the round-headed, practical, every-day 
Roman sitting upon his judgment seat — a man of no 
sentiment, a man of no spiritual life, but the embodi- 
ment of the practical power of Rome in the world. 
You see on one side and on the other the clamorous 
crowd, some bringing their charges against Jesus, and 
others shouting loudly, "Crucify him!" "Crucify 
him ! " And in this presence stands this One, with 
bound hands, who is part of it and yet not of it. Worn 
and wasted by watching, by being dragged from the 
garden of Gethsemane to the hail of Caiaphas, broken 
and abused, stricken and afflicted, he stands with wan, 
wasted and worn face before the judgment seat of Pilate. 
He was there and not there. There in presence, but 
away in thought. He has nothing to do with this 
court. His cause and his case does not lie here. He 
has appealed to another judgment seat than this. 
Whatever sentence there may be here affects him not. 
His eyes are turned away. His thought is away. 



224 BEARING WITNESS TO THE TRUTH. 

Some of the questions that are asked him he passes 
by in silence. Others he answers courteously, according 
to his thought. "Art thou a king, then ? " " Thou 
sayest it ; I am a king, but my kingdom is not of this 
world." It is the kingdom of the truth. " To this end 
was I born and for this cause came I into the world, to> 
bear witness to the truth." This is our thought this 
morning, that a man's business in the world is to bear 
witness to the truth. 

Last Sunday morning we spoke of the obligations 
which rest upon all those who would live by the soul 
and self, instead of by public and current opinion, form, 
convention and creed ; and I believe we saw that the 
responsibilities which rest upon such an one are heavier, 
and the obligations which are discovered are finer, and 
the obedience which is demanded is more instant than 
the obligation, responsibility or obedience which are 
imposed upon us by the current opinion of the world. 

I propose to examine these obligations this morning,, 
to ascertain what they are and how we are to meet 
them. There are three things which every one must 
do : Speak the truth, do justice, and love mercy. These 
are the three essential elements of religion, whether of 
the Mohammedan, the Buddhist, the Jew, the Chinese, 
or the Christian. They are elements that are common 
to all religions. As soon as the religious instinct begins 
to clear itself from the clouds of ignorance and super- 
stition, these principles, living and forceful, emerge as 
stars emerge at night from the clouds. To speak the- 
truth, to do justice and to love mercy constitute the 
vital principles of religion. 

The prayer of an Egyptian priest, dug from a tomb- 
three thousand years old, is this : "0 Thou, the One! 
Though stars may fall from heaven on summer nights, 
yet Thine eternal and unchangeable laws guide the 
planets, never resting, in their course. Thy pure and 



BEARING WITNESS TO THE TRUTH. 225 

all pervading spirit is in me, as I know by my horror of 
a lie. Manifest Thyself in me as light when I think ; as 
mercy when I act; and when I speak as truth- -always 
as truth." What better word can you get for any one 
than this prayer of an Egyptian nearly three thousand 
years silent? And let us put with this the word of 
Micah : " What doth the Lord require of thee but to do 
justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with 
thy God?" Or the word written upon the old Greek 
temple in the vale of Tempe : " In soberness and 
righteousness and truth thou must worship within this 
temple." 

The first element in religion is that of truth; the 
search for it, and the expression of it. The search for 
truth is the very mainspring of human progress. It 
shows itself in the curiosity of the child, in the love for 
fact of the investigator and the search for knowledge of 
the student. The obligation to speak truth is looked 
upon everywhere as imperative. The utmost contempt 
of the world rests upon the man who speaks falsely and 
confuses things that should be made plain. You may 
tell a man that he is unjust, and he may find no fault. 
You may tell him that he is ungenerous, and he may 
pride himself on that fact. But you can not tell him 
that he is false or that he lies, without his resenting it 
quickly and forcefully, even though his whole life be a 
lie — false and degraded. Some instinct as to the obli- 
gation of a man to speak the truth yet lives in him, 
and he lies when he says it, but denies that he lies. 

Go as far back as one may in history there is the 
same contempt for the liar, the falsifier of things, the 
confuser of truth. Truth is one of the first obligations 
to assert itself upon the human life. Why is it? One 
does not at first know why it is, but gradually it is 
recognized that it is the very first condition of living 
in this world. When Paul urges to the speaking of 

15 



226 BEARING WITNESS TO THE TRUTH. 

truth he says : " Let every one speak the truth with 
his neighbor." Why? Because we are members one 
of another, and truth is the social bond. It is truth 
that binds man to man in the usual economic relations 
of life. Lies bring confusion into business and industry 
and politics and home. Truth binds man to man, and 
man to God. We may say, indeed, that all virtues re- 
solve themselves into the sense of truth. 

Justice is but the truth of act; mercy is but the 
truth of sympathy; honesty is but the truth of daily 
action. Now, what is meant by truth? This word is 
so very old that its original meaning is lost, but a 
secondary meaning is that of fidelity. Truth and 
fidelity come from the same root and are different 
words for the same things. Truth — let me give you 
this as a definition — is fidelity to the fact, faithfulness 
to things as they are. A true line is a line that is 
mathematically faithful to the fact. A true law is a 
law that is faithful to justice. A true man is a man 
that is faithful to the noblest conceptions of life. The 
one thing that we have to do, of course, in this world, 
is to live here according to the laws that are imposed 
upon life. We do not know these laws naturally, but 
we search for them. The laws are the facts with re- 
gard to life. Truth is living according to the facts of 
life, faithfulness to the fact. We discover these facts 
with regard to life very painfully. We build them 
into our sciences and we codify them into our 
laws. They need constant renewal and amplification 
and fulfillment. But the heart and center of the 
thought of truth is fidelity to the facts that are revealed 
to us through search. Life in its deepest meaning, then, 
is bearing witness to the truth. This is the end for 
which we are born. This is the cause for which we 
come into the world, by speech and by act, to be faithful 
to facts. A man is a revelation of a fact of God. By 



BEARING WITNESS TO THE TRUTH. 227 

our lives men gain ideas of God's truths. These reve- 
lations are partial. JSTone is complete. Each one, as it 
were, gives a glimpse or emphasizes some one fact, and 
from the study of many such revelations we ascertain, 
in the main, what are the great conditions of life, what 
are the laws of existence, what are the ideas of the 
Most High. 

A false man confuses God's fact. A false man says 
that is black which is white; that is honest which is 
dishonest. The study of the flowers reveals to Darwin 
the ^ method of G-od in creation. The study of the 
movement of planetary bodies gives to Kepler the laws 
of motion which do not err or vary. The study of a 
falling apple and a moving moon gives to New T ton the 
fact of the ]aw of gravitation. The study of heat gives 
to Tyndall the laws of the mechanical motion of heat. 
These do not lie ; these are true to the fact. The de- 
ductions made from them may err or vary a little, but 
in the main here are things that do not lie. Flowers 
do not lie ; stars do not lie ; dust does not lie ; animals 
do not lie. The facts of God are all there ; they are 
true to the fact. 

Life, the play of force and feeling, is a mystery, and 
death is a mystery. Everything is a mystery until a 
man comes forth from God and reveals some facts about 
him. A philosopher states the facts with regard to 
mental development and gives us the science of educa- 
tion ; and another the science of health. Observations 
from facts give us laws. Every soul comes out of the 
unknown and begins to live a life under the pressure of 
certain spiritual forces that act upon life ; and we watch 
that man, or woman, or child, and we gain some slight 
conception of the truth, as it is behind nature and with 
God. So these revelations are new or they confirm 
things that are already known. Certain things are 
commonly received among us and belong to the history 



228 BEARING WITNESS TO THE TRUTH. 

of the ages. A life bears witness, then, to what? To 
the order of God's universe. Does it bear witness to 
the fact that all is confusion, that lies work in the court 
of the Most High, that dishonesty is the law of life? 
Know that order, honesty, truth and justice are the. at- 
tributes of the Most High, and when we use these words 
in our own action and dealing they have real, ringing, 
current value, and they mean the same with man that 
they do with God. 

The obligations that truth imposes upon us are : 
First, the search for it ; second, the formation of con- 
victions or opinions as the result of this search ; third, 
the duty of expression, by speech and by act; and, 
fourth, the duty of the attempt to realize, so far as it 
is possible, these convictions in society. The search 
for truth is imposed upon us at our birth. We read it 
in a little child's curiosity and in a man's love of knowl- 
edge. We can well appreciate the remark of the great 
Lessing: "If God were to offer me, on the one hand, 
the whole world and the knowledge of all things that 
are in it ; and, on the other hand, the privilege of search- 
ing for truth, with the pain and disappointment, but 
still the privilege of search, I should take the privilege 
of the search for truth rather than the absolute perfect 
knowledge of things as they are." So great a love has 
the human soul for knowing things, and so great a 
privilege does it account the search for them. Compare 
with Lessing this sneer of Pilate's, no honest word, but 
a skeptic's sneer, " What is truth ? " As if he had said, 
You talk about truth before me ; there is no such thing 
as truth in the world. It expresses the hopeless skep- 
ticism of the last days of Rome. 

A child's curiosity and a man's love of knowledge — 
these stand at the extremes, the one at the beginning, 
the other at the height of the desire to know what is 



BEARING WITNESS TO THE TRUTH. 229 

truth. Otherwise, there is idiocy or paralysis, and at 
last the disappearance of the very intellectual power to 
search for truth. 

That duty we all recognize, and I will pass to the 
next, which is the duty of forming opinions as the re- 
sult of our search. Consciously or unconsciously, we 
make up our minds in regard to things. There is no 
place for a man or a woman who has not an opinion, 
definite and clear, upon the great questions of life and 
duty. It is the duty of the intellect, and it lies within 
its power to make up a judgment or an opinion. This 
must be done, however painful. Whenever a man sees 
the beckoning finger, however shadowy, of the truth — 
however contented he is and well to do — he must leave 
his house and go out, like Abraham, to a land he knows 
not of, which G-od is showing him, even though he may 
never have settled habitation, but dwell in tents like 
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The duty of forming an 
opinion of things — for this cause must a man leave his 
father and his mother and cleave unto the truth. We 
can not live by a code. We can live by the truth which 
we are continually seeing and which makes an impres- 
sion upon us ; and also by the truth which we are hear- 
ing day by day. You can not ride two horses. You 
can not do two things. You must choose one or the 
other. You must hate the one and love the other. But 
when once this vision is given to you of the newer and 
the better and the higher life, all things must be left for 
its sake, whatever the cost may be. 

The duty of expressing this truth, when you have 
once made up your mind, falls under two heads — that 
of speaking it and that of acting it. To speak the truth 
and to act it may give the expression of the conviction 
that you have. A conviction of truth is not a thing 
to be put aside. It is a thing to live by, day by day. 
It must be expressed. While it is in its formative period 



230 BEARING WITNESS TO THE TRUTH. 

you may hold it ; you can suspend your judgment for a 
time ; you can say, I am not quite certain about it ; but 
when fully realized it demands instant obedience to it 
by voice and by action. Especially is this true when 
one differs from the current thought in anything. The 
consequences we have nothing to do with. The simple 
question is, am I true to myself and the vision that is 
given me ? The realization, or the attempt to realize 
our truth in life, that is, to live our own life in it, is a 
more troublesome thing. Jesus, Avhile he held himself 
rigidly to the truth that was revealed to him, said to 
his disciples, " I have many things to say unto you, but 
you can not bear them now." What belongs to the 
world, that we must speak at all times. The truth be- 
longs to it. At no time conceal a truth for any fear. 

But the attempt to realize a thing may need a pecu- 
liar conjunction of circumstances which have not yet 
come. A man may well have believed in the old time 
that he must bear his witness against slavery. He 
speaks against it. He will not consort with those who 
believe in it. But whether he attempts to eject slavery 
from this government or not depends entirely upon other 
things. If one man, however, holds a truth and voices 
it, it is always to be remembered that that same truth 
is just about to be revealed, if it is not already revealed,, 
to another, and to many other men. When the great 
planet Neptune was discovered, it was discovered simul- 
taneously by two men — Adams in this country and 
Leverrier in France. Every great discovery has been 
given not to one man, but to many. One man is the 
fortunate voicer of it, the one who comes out of the 
wilderness saying; Prepare ye the way of the Lord. 
But there are left seven thousand who have not bowed 
their knee to evil, and he who would voice the truth at 
any cost will know that there are others who think as 
he does ; and it hastens the good time that is coming, to 



BEARING WITNESS TO THE TRUTH. 231 

simply have any man stand up and say ; This is to me 
the truth, and I will stand by the consequences of it. 
It creates a center of faith around which all things can 
begin to crystallize. 

Now, these thoughts which are put forth somewhat 
didactically, may apply to religion, to business, to poli- 
tics and to our homes. We are to search in religion for 
the truth, and this search goes along the line of obedi- 
ence. Live in obedience to the highest thing you know 
and you will see yet farther. He who climbs the mount 
of obedience stands at last on the mount of vision. 

In business it is the same. Truth of word and act 
must obtain. There can be no compromise with that 
which is false here, and no wealth that may result will 
compensate a man for the fact that he has sold himself 
to the false and is a degraded man in the eyes of the 
universe, however his fellow men may count him. Truth 
in politics insists upon it that a man shall hold to his 
convictions and shall be independent in his judgment 
when great issues come. Of truth in the home I say 
only that we ought of all things to teach our children 
to speak and act the truth, and not to bring them up in 
any lies, of religion or politics or business. The method 
which we take is this : Obedience to every obligation, 
however minute, creates a sensitiveness to the reception 
of fine moral distinctions, and strength of will to choose 
and carry out the dictates of conscience. 

And the truth we speak, says Paul, must be spoken 
in love ; and that is a thing people forget. Do not make 
of truth a bludgeon or cudgel with which to break down 
somebody else. The witness to the truth at last issues 
in the cross of Christ. The end of all true living and 
speaking, for some years, will be Calvary of one kind 
or another, for the cross of Christ was this. Christ's 
death was a witness to the truth. It is that which 
gives to the cross of Christ its significance. It is the 



232 BEARING WITNESS TO THE TRUTH. 

most powerful symbol the world, has ever known. Its 
power lies in the fact that at a peculiar period in the 
history of the world a man of like nature and passions 
with ourselves, of humble birth, saw the truth about 
life and became obedient to it, even unto the death by 
the cross. He died rather than be silent about it ; rather 
than to be false to it. He was faithful to the facts of 
life. That faithfulness has made the world Christian. 
The facts of life were not new. But it was new that it 
was a man's duty to die for them. 

The great facts of life which he uttered were that 
God is the Father of the human race, and that all men 
are brothers. And from these simple statements there 
could be deduced the duties of worship and the duties 
of justice and of love. Truth to these facts cost Jesus 
Christ his life upon the cross. Truth to these facts 
made a center of faith in a faltering and failing world. 
Belonging as they did to the very nature of things, one 
with the process of the suns and with the growing corn, 
when once death consecrated them they became the law 
of the world. All religions silently crumbled before 
the disintegrating touch of those facts ; all kingdoms 
rocked through the revolutionary forces that are in the 
world to-day. The uplifted cross is a sign to the world 
that one man kept his faith and his truth even nnto 
death. The truth he kept was that life is a trust to be 
used for the good of the world. The teaching of the 
cross is that we must all keep our truth and bear our 
witness to the spiritual facts of life. 



THE LAW OF MUTUAL AID. 



THE LAW OF MUTUAL AID. 



j^Y subject this morning is the law of mutual 
/ aid. I shall introduce it by a little story 
^v3 which I have cut from a paper. 

A workman in a pottery factory had one small in- 
valid child at home. He wrought at his trade with 
exemplary fidelity, being always in the shop with the 
opening of the day. Every night he carried to the bed- 
side of his " wee lad," as he called him, a flower, a bit 
of ribbon or a fragment of crimson glass, something 
that would lie out on the white counterpane and give 
color to the room. 

He was a quiet, unsentimental man, and said nothing 
to any one about his affection for his boy. He simply 
went on loving him, and soon the whole shop was 
brought into half-conscious fellowship with him. 

The workmen made curious little jars and cups, and 
painted diminutive pictures upon their sides before they 
stuck them in the corners of the kiln at burning time. 
One brought some fruit, and another a few engravings 
in a rude scrap-book. Not one of them whispered a 
word, this solemn thing was not to be talked about.. 
They put the gifts in the old man's hat, where he found 
them; he understood all about it. Little by little all 
the men, of rather coarse liber by nature, grew gentle 
and kind, and some stopped swearing as the weary 
look on their patient fellow-worker's face told them 



236 THE LAW OF MUTUAL AID. 

beyond mistake that the inevitable shadow was draw- 
ing nearer. Every day some one did a piece of work, 
for him, and put it on the sanded bank to dry, so that 
he might come later and go earlier. 

So when the bell tolled and the little coffin came out 
of the lonely door, a hundred stalwart workingmen 
from the pottery, all in their clean clothes, stood just 
around the corner. Most of them had given a half 
day's time for the privilege of following to the grave 
that small burden of a child, though probably not one 
of them had ever seen him. 

Among the unrecorded sayings of Jesus Christ are 
these : " With them that burn, I burn ; with them that 
are athirst, I thirst ; with them that are sick, I am sick, 
and with them that are hungry, I hunger." Yet another 
one is this : a Be good bankers,' 5 that is, be good users 
or changers of money. 

This intense sympathy of Jesus Christ with all kinds 
and conditions of life is one of the first things that 
strikes us in reading the gospels. And while we miss 
from the gospels these words which I have read to you, 
they are very like what Jesus did say. Of course not 
one-hundredth part of his sayings are recorded in these 
gospels. Time has saved the essential words that he 
uttered, but has forgotten much that we would like 
to keep. These words have the touch of Jesus. The 
ring of his voice is in them, the tone in which he spoke. 
We say of them they are like him. It is the perfect 
identification of one nature with another. It is put- 
ting one's self into the place of another, and under- 
standing just what the impact of some burden is, or the 
touch of some sorrow, and the desire of some great 
want. We know of no one in the world who seems 
to understand people — without their telling him about 
their trouble or voicing their thought. But Christ 
read it in the look of their eye, the flush or paling 



THE LAW OF MUTUAL AID. 237 

of their face. We grope our way sympathetically. 
Here is a man who is bent over, or one with lame legs, 
or one that has a deformed body; these are the surface 
signs. We can tell the flush of fever or the rigor of a 
chill. A yet more subtle physician can read in these 
symptoms the signs of some great disturbance that is 
going on in the body. The sphygmograph upon the 
wrist will tell the exhilaration or retardation of the 
movement of the pulse. The thermometer will regis- 
ter the rising or falling temperature. Little by little, 
these things are being made known by the sympathetic 
reading of science, and there are men and women of 
subtle insight, the insight of love, who can tell some of 
the storms and passions that go on in the human heart. 
Some woman whose own bruised heart has made her 
sensitive, can see at a glance in the face of some one 
the trace of a great agony. We go through life read- 
ing by experience or by sympathetic imagination the 
story of another's trouble. 

Jesus had this intuition of love which we call sym- 
pathy, putting himself in the place of every one, draw- 
ing near to them. Go through the gospels and see the 
touch of Jesus. If it be a little child, he takes it up in 
his arms, he lays his hand upon it and blesses it. In 
another case he sets a little child in the midst. If it be 
a blind man, he leads him by the hand outside the gates, 
puts his fingers upon his eyes. If it be Jairus's daughter, 
he lays his hand upon her, and says : " Little daughter, I 
say unto thee, arise." If it be the woman who furtively 
steals the blessing of healing from him, he searches for 
her until he finds her, and then touching her, he says : 
" Daughter, go in peace, and be whole of thy plague." 
He puts his arms about people, stoops with his very 
hand to lift them up, putting his hand upon the fore- 
head or the eye, the ear or the tongue, by personal con- 
tact communicating the thrill of a new life to those 



238 THE LAW OF MUTUAL AID. 

barren souls. It was no distributing of blessings, as 
we throw seed to birds. It was not the selfish giving 
•of alms as when we are obstructed in our way by some 
beggar and we put our hands in our pockets and give a 
dime or a quarter and pass on. He stopped to look and 
to listen and to understand the situation ; and then 
left behind in one's consciousness the memory of 
some great life that, like the wind of G-od, swept by and 
left one strong, glad and hopeful. This was his charac- 
teristic and has ever since been the characteristic of true 
Christianity. I think we might say of it, it is the very 
test of its presence. 

You take what is called litmus paper and pass it 
through a certain liquor and it will register, by its 
changed character, the presence of an acid or an alkali. 
So the test, the touchstone, the magnet, that reveals the 
presence of Christianity, is carrying a loving heart 
through the w r orld. 

The mere name christian stands for nothing. There 
may be the name of Christianity and not the presence 
of its spirit. The distinctive feature, the essential qual- 
ity of Christ in Christianity is this sympathetic touch of 
the Christ or the Christ-like man upon the life of some 
one. So, wherever Christianity is pure and simple, we 
find, springing up in its path and blossoming about it, 
as when summer comes, all kinds of beautiful charities, 
rescues, reforms, ameliorations, mitigations and every- 
thing by means of which a forgiving soul and a loving 
heart puts itself in contact with the misery or sorrow 
of the world, and tries in some way to bring God's 
bountiful, joyful life into contact with it. The most 
christian nation in the world, with the most profound 
studies into the philosophy of its faith and with the 
most noble buildings, we should count unchristian if 
there had not sprang up everywhere these institutions 
for the protection of the weak; these missions for the 



THE LAW OF MUTUAL AID. 239 

recovery of the lost ; these endeavors for the enlarge- 
ment of the life of the unsuccessful; this search for the 
wandering souls of sons and daughters. These things 
are distinctive of Christianity. 

In history who are our heroes and our saints ? Whose 
graves do we visit ? Where do we go on our pilgrim- 
ages? Why, we go to the graves of those who have 
been the saints or heroes of humanity. We do not care 
where Alexander the Great lies buried. We do not 
care where Caesar lies buried. We do not care much 
where Napoleon lies buried, or, if we do, it is only be- 
cause of the practical and economic results that followed 
his work, the great road over the Simplon Pass, or the 
schools, or the enfranchisememt of the Jews. Not his 
victories but his defeats, the things that were left behind 
him, apparently unvalued, are what we most value. But 
we do think of St. Francis of Assisi, who loved even the 
bears and the ravening wolf, and who took the vow of 
poverty for the love of God's little people; we do 
think of St. Bernard, of Clairvaux, who used his im- 
mense power to bring emperors and popes into recon- 
ciliation, and protested with the voice of God against 
injustice and wrong ; and St. Vincent de Paul, Eliza- 
beth Fry, Mary Carpenter and Dorothy Dix — these are 
our saints and heroes,because the world's unerring judg- 
ment has said the gift of man to man is life. The power 
of a man over the world is his power to communicate 
hope and to awaken the desire and longing for life. He 
is greatest who is greatest in service, who is most like 
Christ in his power of ministration and of lifting up 
that which is bowed down. 

Now, this recognition of sympathy as really an obli- 
gation upon us as well as a noble privilege, has in these 
later days encountered a certain obstruction in what is 
believed to be the revelation of one of the great factors 
of evolution. Men are asking: : How, then, in view of 



240 THE LAW OF MUTUAL AID. 

Darwin's law of the survival of the fittest, can we have 
any warrant for going behind and picking up those 
weak ones that nature would have left to die, or to re- 
form those who are deformed, whom nature found un- 
fitted for her struggle, or to save the little Greek or 
Roman life exposed to wild animals or to be sold to the 
slave dealer? What warrant have we for sympathy, 
says this new doctrine of the struggle for existence and 
the survival of the fittest? 

We speak of the battle of life, and life is a battle 
against foes without and foes within. Blind is he who 
does not recognize it. This struggle for existence is 
nature's chief factor in the progress of the species, its 
growth in strength, intellectual and physical. This 
same struggle for existence is everywhere. It is not 
only between plant and plant, and between individuals 
of the same class, but it is also between class and class 
and group and group. It is also in industry and com- 
merce. Every man is our enemy. He is trying to 
grasp some prize. that we want. There is only food 
enough for one ; shall I get it or shall you ? There is 
only place enough for one ; shall I kill you or you me ? 
There is only wealth enough for one. The strong com- 
pete for it. Therefore, he says the struggle for exist- 
ence, the law of competition, is the law of life. Let 
every man compete w r ith his neighbor. This is the 
doctrine that is called the law of the survival of the 
fittest. Those w r ho are fittest to cope in the battle of 
life, strongest in brain and strongest in hand, will sur- 
vive and will communicate in a certain measure their 
tendencies to their successors or progeny, who in their 
turn will be better able to struggle. So life becomes 
one great battlefield, and the cry becomes, " Woe to the 
conquered !" Huxley says there is no one in nature to 
turn down the thumb of pity, as the Vestal Virgin used 



THE LAW OF MUTUAL AID. 241 

to do to stop the fight of the gladiators, for nature has 
no pity, and simply gives its premium to strength and 
courage. 

Xow, if indeed this he true, I see no reason and no 
warrant for our sympathy. Our sympathy becomes a 
sentiment and a sentimentality, and we are doing wrong 
to the nature of things to try to rescue that which is 
lost and to try to strengthen that which is weak. If 
we keep little children alive we are only making more 
mouths to feed ; we are breaking up the opportunity of 
life into smaller and smaller pieces ; it is simply a mat- 
ter of prolonged starvation. If we take the deformed 
one, the blind, the deaf, those that are unfit for the 
struggle of life, we are doing, says this gospel, what 
nature is trying to prevent our doing. Mature would 
say to anybody unfit to cope, stand aside, starve, I want 
only strong men and women to fight in my great bat- 
tle of life, and so to develop strength and fullness of 
force. This gospel, if one may use the word for the 
time, of the survival of the fittest, the struggle for ex- 
istence, falls very harmoniously into line with man's 
selfish instincts. It is very good, the selfish man says, 
that I have this reinforcement. Indeed, I did not feel 
that I had any obligation toward the weak or the sick, 
the broken or the discouraged. It is true that a false 
public sentiment among my neighbors has compelled 
me to subscribe or do something for them ; but all the 
w r hile there w r as something within me that said I didn't 
w T ant to, and now I find that nature does not want me to. 
I can walk hand in hand with nature. How good it is 
to walk in that company ! 

"Well, if this were all of it true, friends, w T e should 
have no warrant for it ; w r e should have no right to dis- 
tribute food that belongs to a few among so many ; and 
no right to work in charities or anything of that kind. 
But nature always says just one word at a time and is 

16 



242 THE LAW OF MUTUAL AID. 

never afraid of the consequences. We are so anxious 
to be consistent and symmetrical and harmonious, that 
we want to state all our truths at one time. But nature 
simply throws out one truth and says, think about it, 
perhaps for a few thousand years. Then comes another 
truth, and by and by another. It is changing all the 
wmile. Nature gives us her words one at a time, and 
is not anxious for the consequences. 

There has come to life, within the last few years, or 
there has been erected, as it were, into a science or law, 
certain forgotten facts of nature, which have been called 
the Law of Mutual Aid. They were first put in order by 
a Russian zoologist of St. Petersburg. These things 
have come to me as a reassurance that in the sympa- 
thetic law of life I see that which is not contrary to but 
in harmony with the law of nature. Now, says this 
Russian, a wrong use has been made of that law of the 
survival of the fittest. That is not the prime factor in 
nature. The prime factor in nature is the law of mu- 
tual aid. And he goes on with a number of instances 
to show how in the lowest things the individual as the 
colony grows strong by mutual aid. Far more import- 
ant than struggling with one another is working to- 
gether. That is nature's great word, the law T of mutual 
aid. It is good to have this word brought forward. 
He substantiates it just as all these patient scientific 
students do, by bringing immense congeries of facts to 
bear. We are all familiar with the social animals ; with 
the ant, whose cooperation has brought social life up to 
a pitch which Mr. John Lubbock says almost makes a 
man envy their social organization. So with the beetle, 
the bee, the wasp, and many other things. Wherever 
we go we find more facts with regard to the combina- 
tion of animals for mutual defense, for protection of 
their young, for the better gathering and saving of their 
food, for compassion upon the old and the weak — we 



THE LAW OF MUTUAL AID. 243 

find more facts that make for this than you can find- 
that prove struggle. That was a simple glimpse that 
Darwin had into a certain law ; but the struggle for ex- 
istence is not as between man and man and this mem- 
ber and that member of the same class, so much as 
between everything and its exterior circumstances, the 
climate and the earth, the things that are about, rather 
than the folks and things that are in the same class. 

Now the purposes of organization in animals for 
mutual aid are these, first of all to defend themselves 
against the incursion of robber bands. The wild duck 
does this ; the king-bird does it; the sparrows do it; 
the martins do it. There are a great many birds, you 
shall find, who have banded themselves together in 
great bands for the sake of defending themselves 
against sparrow-hawks, kites and eagles. On the fron- 
tier or the outskirts of all social life are certain preda- 
tory or robber bands. At one time they dominated the 
earth. Little by little they have been pushed out into 
the night and into the frontiers of life. Everything 
hunts them there. Solitary in their lives, they very 
rarely group together. Sometimes a few eagles are 
seen in company, but usually it is one lonely bird soar- 
ing about; but yet even he, when he sees that which he 
is to feed upon, gives his peculiar whistle which brings 
another eagle. The ducks come together, the cranes 
come together, and a thousand different animals all meet 
together in what is called the social life, by the scient- 
ists, in order to defend themselves against predatory or 
robber bands. The antelope on the plain will feed only 
when a sentinel is stationed out. The bulls and cows of 
the plain always go together in such a way as to form 
a great circle, with the calves on the inside, the cows 
next, the bulls next, because of the wandering bands 
of coyote or wolves that are there. The wandering 
herds of mustangs do the same thing. 



244 THE LAW OF MUTUAL AID. 

Thviu again, it is not only for defense, but for co- 
operation in getting food. What is the migration, for 
example, of birds, up from the south in the spring, 
down toward the south in the winter, but for company ; 
and in their company will come a great many little 
birds for their protection. Wheu the storks come from 
Egypt up into Holland again, many kinds of little birds 
fly in and out among them, and many say these little 
birds come on the backs or nestling: under the wiugs of 
the larger birds like the storks and cranes. Every- 
where you see about you signs of social life. A Greek 
orator interrupted himself to say, "I see in the court- 
yard a sparrow who has seen a slave let fall a sack of 
corn from his ass. He is now gone to tell his fellow 
sparrows what quantities of food are here to be found ;" 
and even while he spoke back came the troop of spar- 
rows. Enough for us all and to spare. The Greeks 
also told of the stork, that she takes from her own 
breast the feathers which are to line the nest of the old 
father and mother ; and the Greeks lifted this up into 
law, which they called the law of the stork, which w T as 
that the children were bound to take care of their 
fathers and mothers, and the state of its people, ten- 
derly caring for the old, even to the extent of taking 
from one's self that which would give comfort and 
help. 

Then this association is not only for defense and for 
the getting of food and the protection of the young, 
but also for compassion's sake, for pity, Eor example, 
there are many instances that could be related how 
rats will keep old blind rats and feed them : and a trav- 
eler across the plains told how a blind swan was fed 
with fish brought twice a day from a lake thirty miles 
away. A wounded badger will be cared for by other 
badgers. Livingstone, I remember, tells of a wounded 



THE LAW OF MUTUAL AID. 245 

buffalo that was caught up between the stroug shoul- 
ders of the other buffalo and carried to some retreat of 
safety. Then of the monkey, which Humboldt says > 
the most human of all things. He tells how he saw 
them gather up close to a little shivering one and wrap 
their tails about it that thev rniffht serve as a cloak for 
comfort. Forbes tells how monkevs will stand over a 
feeble or dead one trying to induce it to follow them, 
although their own lives might be jeopardized, relin- 
quishing it only when all hope was gone. 

Illustrations might be multiplied many fold of what 
is called the law of mutual aid for defense, for the bet- 
ter getting of food, for the protection of the young, 
and for compassion upon the weak, the wounded and 
the old. This is why we rind in nature this law of 
mutual aid. It is a greater law than the struggle for 
existence. More ancient than competition is combina- 
tion. The little, feeble, fluttering folk of God, like the 
spinning insects, the little mice in the meadow, the rat 
in the cellar, the crane upon the marshes or the boom- 
ing bittern — all these things have learned that God's 
great word is together and not alone ; that the race is 
not to him who tries to run the swiftest, but is to them 
who keep together; that fewer lives are lost, strength 
comes quicker, encouragement, hope, compassion and 
the things that nourish life, are to be found where 
social life, with its obligations and privileges obtains. 

Is not this a new thought, comparatively, to come to 
us out of what seems so grim a science? You see you 
have a warrant for vour sympathy: you feel that vou 
can enlarge it without interfering with nature, that 
vou are not multiplying mouths onlv to starve them, 
when vou try to brins; back life to little dvins: babies. 



r 



Of course, the heart has known it all the while Its 



sacred instincts have not been false to the thought of 
God. AVe have been fanning the breath back to the 



246 THE LAW OF MUTUAL AID. 

little feverish ones ; we have been feeding the hungry 
and trying to bring up those that had fallen behind in 
the march of life. We did not know we had any war- 
rant for it other than our own instincts, or any reason 
for it other than our own insight ; but now comes science 
with confirmation as strong as holy w T rit to say, you 
were right about it; your instincts were right, you saw 
into the nature of things. In all this you were moving 
with God and with all the great tendencies of nature. 
^Nature's word is not compete but combine; not each 
one for himself, but each for all, all for each. 

We turn back to these words of Jesus Christ. He is 
but interpreting the voice of nature : " On the solid 
ground of nature rests the mind that builds for aye.'* 
He was not wrong about it. All his endeavor was but 
the pre-revelation of the great secrets of God. The 
Roman w^as trying to attain the secret of power; the 
Greek was trying to know the secret of philosophy; 
but Jesus Christ was stooping to lift up that which 
was fallen down, was standing by the bedside of the 
daughter of Jairus, and waiting to hear the confession 
of the woman who had the issue of blood. And in so. 
doing we find that his w T as the victory, not Pilate's,, 
who put him to death ; his was the truth, not the 
Greek's, who sought for knowledge and penetrated the 
heart of nature. 

So we find a warrant for what Paul says, that we are 
so bound together that when one member suffers all the 
members suffer with it. If there is an ache in the head,, 
the whole head is sick and the whole heart faint. So. 
we find every reformer has a warrant for his work. He 
who is trying to make God's blessing and bounty pos- 
sible to most is stepping into line w^ith nature. He who. 
rebukes the careless selfishness of man is simply doing 
so in the interest of man. We find further than that*. 



THE LAW OF MUTUAL AID. 247 

that the selfish man is the isolated man. Many car- 
niverous animals have disappeared in the history of 
creation, and are still slowly disappearing. Farther 
and farther recedes the wolf's lone howl on the Alaska 
shore; more and more infrequent is the bark of the 
coyote. Little by little these flesh-eaters that disturb 
social order and break social union are disappearing. 

So lonely, isolated, tyrannic men are disappearing. 
No longer does an Alexander stride across the world, 
or Csesar or Napoleon dream of universal empire. The 
word of the present is together. The unions and the 
confederations, whether of workmen, or employers, all 
are signs of the effort nature is making toward associa- 
tion. God's word is together. 

It is, dear friends, this fact of the law of mutual aid 
that is continually saying we must do these things. 
Why can I not eat my food when I see somebody starv- 
ing? Why can not I sleep at night when- 1 hear of 
somebody who has no bed ? Why must you or I go 
out on this or that errand? Because one of God's 
strongest laws, just as imperative as the law of hunger, 
is on us, the law of mutual aid. We must stop and let 
those catch up ; we must stand aside and pick up our 
elbow-fellow who has fallen out of the ranks. It is the 
insistence of nature that no selfish isolation but happy 
social combination is her urgent and is her great law. 

We have opportunities enough to do this, and we 
must look upon them as privileges, not even as duties. 
There is something better than duty — that is privilege. 
We must look upon these opportunities as God-given. 
We are bound together ; we can not ignore it. Louis 
XI Y took refuge from a storm in the hut of one of 
the meanest of his servants, and there nature taught 
him that which he had never believed, that there was 
one brother to himself. He had insisted that everyone 
should call him Sire, but nature taught him there was 



248 THE LAW OF MUTUAL AID. 

a bond of brotherhood, because from this man he 
caught the small-pox, of which he died. Once there 
was a poor widow in the streets of Glasgow, who plead 
that she was a sister and asked that she, with her four 
or five children, might be fed; the people did not be- 
lieve she was a sister, but she taught them that she was 
of the same blood, because, lying down to die of the 
typhus fever, she caused seventeen others to die with 
her. Her blood was just the same as theirs. 

If we do not stop to help all kinds of people, we, too, 
shall be forgotten ; for with the measure we mete it shall 
be measured to us again. We must make our insane 
asylum good because we ourselves or some one we love 
may sometime be there. We can not neglect a single 
provision for the happiness or health of people. Our 
children will sometime want the sympathy to which we 
can add our minute contribution. This is the great 
bank of sympathy from which we draw God's inex- 
haustible fund ; older than selfishness, the most ancient 
thing there is next to the pulsation of life is the fact of 
human sympathy. We are bound together for good or 
for evil. We sink or swim together. The shame of 
one is the shame of all; the joy of one is the joy of 
all. This is the bank of sympathy to which every good 
cause appeals. 

Theodora Parker said you can always trust the peo- 
ple, because any appeal which is made to them, that 
is just and wise, will be in time responded to. Have 
we not found it so? This bank of sympathy which 
God continually fills up, which no cheek can exhaust, 
whose balance is like God's infinity and eternity, is with- 
out beginning or end. 

Little by little we take up the causes that appeal to 
us. We tell our neighbor about them. The children 
in the free kindergartens, the children in the orphan 



THE LAW OF MUTUAL AID. 249 

asylums, the neglected children on the streets, the wid- 
ows left with little children, the wives deserted — worse 
than fatherless the children, worse than husbandless the 
women — the broken, suffering, defective, deranged, de- 
formed, these make their appeal to us. Strangely 
enough, they make it in the name of God — " for God's 
sake." We never knew how deep that was, perhaps, 
until now you see that in the very nature of things 
God has made this law of mutual aid so strong that he 
has impressed and stamped it upon the life of every- 
thing that breathes. 



THE BUSINESS OF THE FATHER. 



252 THE BUSINESS OF THE FATHER. 



May the spirit of prayer come, as the wind steals 
over the fainting, thirsty traveler, cooling and refresh- 
ing him. May the spirit -of the living God, which is 
the creative principle in the nature without us, come to 
us to-day in restoring power, soothing all that are 
troubled, strengthening all that are weak, healing all 
that are sick, giving to minds confused and trembling 
the peace of God: 

We pray Thee this day that, with the breath of God 
coming sweet and fragrant through door and through 
window, there may be to us a thought which is deeper 
than other thoughts, a consciousness of a presence 
which is within us, which is giving color to our thought, 
sweetness to our song, and strength to our endeavor. 
Help us to think of Thee less and less in terms of man, 
as with voice that speaks and hand that touches, and 
more and more as the Presence that fills all living 
things, that gives to everything its strength, its good- 
ness and its beauty. When shall we know that our 
lives are in Thee, as the life of a bird is in Thee, as the 
life of a flower is hid in the mysterious depth of na- 
ture? 

When shall we know that our thought, goodness, 
love, joy, and peace come from Thee? "Thou, God, 
seest us," we heard of old, and perhaps to us the 
thought came as of one who looks at us angrily and 
jealously. But we know, in the larger, newer thought, 
that God looks lovingly upon everything we do, as 
fathers and mothers look upon playing children, when 
the work of the day done and the evening meal taken, 
released from care and free from fear, the children play. 
Thou lookest upon us to love us ; Thou lookest upon 



THE BUSINESS OF THE FATHER. 253 

us to strengthen, and to guide us ; to dissipate the 
clouds of ignorance in which all doleful noises are 
heard and all unkindly forms come. 

Thou sweepest away all clouds of fear from men's 
spirits. Little by little the old, dreadful forms of 
thought take their place back in the past, drawing 
away from men's minds all fear and doubt. We no 
longer see Thee as a jealous God, looking upon us as 
one angrily watches, but we look upon Thee as the 
spirit of life that maketh all things new. We see Thee 
now in the person of some physician who is by a 
bed of fever, helping those who are thus prostrated. 
And now Thou standest by the bed of pain, where a 
little child with broken limb is trying slowly to feel its 
way back to life again. And now Thou art with those 
who mourn, and goest with them to the little grave 
where the body lies, once so dear. And Thou art with 
young men and women, inspiring them with lofty en- 
deavor and glorifying all their thoughts. Thou art 
with men in business, giving them strength and wis- 
dom. Thou art in all the affairs of the world. Thou 
art here always, the spirit of life and goodness and joy 
and truth. 

We meet to-day to praise Thee in silence or in song, 
to let our spirits find their way to Thee. Thou who 
art not far away from any one of us ! We love the 
little children whom thou hast lent us, we take upon 
our hearts the cares of others, and in the spirit of thy 
Christ preach the good news of God's justice and kind- 
ness, and go about healing all manner of sickness and 
dissipating all manner of fear. So we share with Thee 
in the work of thy world, are busy about thy business, 
and enjoying thy life. Amen. 



THE BUSINESS OF THE FATHER. 



* ' Jesus said unto them, Hoiv is it that ye sought me f Wist ye not 
iliat I must be about my Father's business f" 

Luke ii, 49. 

tyfrf^ HIS incident, familiar to us by frequent reading, 
4V^ has often been treated by the poet, the painter 
^c^ and the preacher, bnt it never loses its hold upon 
the affections. It never loses its place in the imagina- 
tion. You are to imagine a boy twelve years old, for 
the first time going up to the national capital, the very 
center of national life, enshrined in the affections of a 
people once great, once free, now practically enslaved. 
You are to see this boy tread these streets over whose 
stone pavements have gone those whom he delights to 
honor; whose walls have re-echoed the sounds of great 
voices; along whose ways Isaiah had gone ; from whose 
hill David had sung ; from the throne of whose magnifi- 
cence Solomon had ruled. Great Saul had once been 
here, and here had come many another lesser name, but 
perhaps greater spirit. 

There is no more important thing in the education 
of a boy or girl than the great memories that cluster 
about a nation's history, and that even embody them- 
selves in the marble and stone of its buildings and 
streets. The very silence becomes vocal, if one listens 
well; and he who has been nourished on his nation's 
history may well be fit in time to assume a part in 



256 THE BUSINESS OF THE FATHER. 

that nation's creative life, and have something to do 
in making that nation's destiny. And so to his national 
capital came this hoy Jesus from the Galilean hills. 

So full was his mind of these great thoughts, so lost 
to consciousness of where he was and how time passed, 
that the story tells us he lost sight and thought of 
father and mother and was found hy them in the temple 
among the wise men, doctors of their sacred law, copy- 
ists of their sacred record, teachers of their sacred tra- 
dition — listening to them and asking questions. And 
here in this temple, the successor of the temple Solomon 
built, and the temple that Zerubbabel had destroyed, in 
this temple building for forty-five years by Herod the 
Great, this boy with his impressible mind, suddenly 
waking to conscious spiritual life, asked his questions 
of those whose grave faces seemed to warrant a wise 
answer, and himself answered the questions which the 
wise are glad to ask of the simple and ingenuous child. 

But not only that. There is another phase of it. 
Here the old religion and the new stood face to face* 
Here, on the one hand, were those heads of the ancient 
religion, wise in all the complexities and the intricacies 
of the written and the traditional law, poring over 
these great parchments, copying without mistake its 
sacred letters, dotting here an i and crossing there a t r 
careful never to depart by the slightest stroke from the 
record that was before them. Here were the represent- 
atives of an ancient and honorable religion, a religion 
which had poured into the world's history the great, 
current of righteousness, but a religion which, formal- 
ized and ceremonious, encrusted by custom and weighted 
down by tradition, had become a weariness and a bur- 
den to the human spirit. Here was a boy of twelve,, 
representative of the new religion God was about to 
bring into the world — simple, natural, ingenuous, with- 
out a formal utterance, with no recognition of tradition 



THE BUSINESS OF THE FATHER. 257 

or custom or ceremony, speaking the word that bubbled 
up out of his heart over his lips, answering the ques- 
tions which they asked him, himself asking out of spir- 
itual curiosity the questions with which his mind was 
full. Here was the representative of the new religion, 
his gospel as yet unuttered, his words as yet unsaid, the 
plan of his life not yet laid. Here in his potential power 
was the new gospel with which God was to bless the 
world. 

I know of few things more impressive, I know of 
nothing which makes its appeal to the imagination so 
powerfully, as this sight of the old religion and the new 
thus brought face to face, the one to decrease and the 
other to increase ; the one binding men's spirits and the 
other freeing men's spirits ; the one recognizing God as 
a fact and a history ; and the other believing in God as 
a spirit and a power. Here is a new conception of life. 
Their worship and religion meant the silver thread of 
incense at night, and the black smoke of sacrifice in the 
morning. Theirs is a religion that means form and 
ceremony, the frequent washings and the daily bath- 
ings, the large care as to the pronunciation of words 
and the observance of new moons and Sabbaths. And 
here is a boy who gathers up, unconsciously, the philos- 
ophy of his life and the whole foundation of a world- 
religion into these words : " Wist ye not that I must 
be about my Father's business ?" 

His conception of life as a business — that is the dawn 
of a great thought, and it becomes the subject of my 
talk this morning. The word business at first has a 
hard and metallic sound. It is associated with the 
clamor of the market and the confused sounds of buyers 
and sellers. But the word itself is busy-ness, activity, 
and yet not this alone, not aimlessly groping, not 
feverishly working, but activity intelligently directed 



258 THE BUSINESS OF THE FATHER. 

to practical, helpful ends and aims ; and, as such, it may 
well take its place among the honorable words of our 
language. 

You are familiar with George Eliot's novel, " Middle- 
march." It is not a cheerful book. One gropes in it as 
in the gray light of morning, or as in a London fog; 
and yet there are here and there clear rays of sunlight, 
bright hope, joyous characters; and such I account 
Caleb Garth, the land surveyor. Caleb Garth has just 
received a letter, offering him the management of the 
Brooks estates. " It's a fine bit of work," he says to 
his wife. U A man without a family would be glad to 
do it for nothing. It's a fine thing to come to a man 
when he's seen into the nature of business ; to have the 
chance of getting a bit of the country into good fettle, 
as they say, and putting men into the right way with 
their farming, and getting a bit of good contriving and 
solid building done, that those who are living and those 
who come after will be the better for. I'd sooner have 
it than a fortune. I hold it the most honorable work 
that is. It's a great gift of God, Susan; it's a great 
gift of God." It would be difficult to convey to those 
who never heard him utter the word "business" the 
peculiar tone of fervid veneration, of religious regard, 
in which he wrapped it, as a consecrated symbol is 
wrapped in its gold-fringed linen. This thought had 
acted on him as poetry without the aid of the poets ; 
had made a philosophy for him without the aid of 
philosophers ; a religion without the aid of theology. 

This, then, is a graphic picture of what we may 
consider business ; and my own imagination is filled 
with this thought of it. At fifteen years of age I left 
school and entered into business, and I have never been 
outside of its atmosphere since that time. Business is 
the perception of the splendid organization of commerce 
and industry, the unconscious co-operation of all kinds 



THE BUSINESS OF THE FATHER. 259 

and conditions of men to bring to us the food which 
nourishes us, to build for us the houses that shelter us, 
and weave for us the cloth that warms us. This takes 
hold of my imagination to-day. I hate confusion, and 
poor work, and skimped and scanty work, and every- 
thing where threads are hanging, where man does not 
work in touch with man, where results are not seen of 
the endeavor of a man, where cause and effect are not 
equal. I love the organization of life, the saving of its 
wasted power, the order that does away with confusion, 
the adaptation of part to part, and part to the whole ; 
and I find in it a poetry, as well as a pleasure and an 
intellectual delight, which never leaves me. So I con- 
sider life always in its business way and in a business 
spirit, and this has led me, during all these years, to try 
to introduce some little order into the confusion of 
man's government, and to bring it closer into the har- 
mony of God's systematic and organized government. 
It is with this same thought that I look upon this 
great, busy world of ours as being God's workshop, 
God's place of business ; and the activity of every force 
that is in it, and the employment of every power, and 
the adaptation of all small to all great ends as being 
part of a splendid organization of business on the part 
of the Almighty Mind and the Infinite Heart. God's 
business in this world ! Let no one think this is a small, 
mean word. Let us expand it until it includes all 
the activities here, and the results of activities, and 
the cooperative forces in nature and in man, all work- 
ing to preserve and to present a perfected, beautiful 
world. The word makes its appeal to the imagination 
in such a thought as this : the spirit of God moving 
over the ancient chaos brings order and beauty into the 
world. God, looking upon it, calls it good, and listen- 
ing, hears the chorus of its mighty march. The human 



260 THE BUSINESS OF THE FATHER. 

mind kindles as the picture presents itself of the organ- 
ized effort of God to produce a beautiful and a perfect 
world; and we see about us the creative work still 
going on. 

We hear Jesus saying, when they rebuked him for 
working on the Sabbath day, my Father is working up 
to this very minute, and therefore I will work. We 
see new forms and shapes of beauty each year; higher 
and more perfect forms are presented, and we realize 
that God is in his world, even though invisible to us. 
We see the living garment of him, woven by the life- 
spirit which, in being's flow and action's form, throws 
here and back again the living shuttle which weaves 
the garment of beauty. Then there is the business of 
maintaining this world; of carrying on all its activi- 
ties ; the universal providence which looks after all and 
which protects all ; in which no flitting insect is small, 
and in which a king's business is never great ; the prov- 
idential care of God, organized perfectly, scientifically, 
without waste of power and without loss of time, 
gathering up every fragment, weaving anew the frayed 
tissue of mind and muscle, worn grass and broken leaf. 

All this is yet another appeal that this thought of 
God's business makes to the human imagination ; and 
bringing it yet closer to ourselves, the same thought 
comes to us when we consider the Infinite Business as 
it is related to man. Man is not all in God's universe, 
although he is much. We interpret this universe 
largely in terms of human egotism ; in earth we say 
there is nothing great but man ; in man we say there 
is nothing great but mind. It is true; but it is w^ell 
for us to know that there are other things than ours, 
other lives than ours. It is well for us to know that it 
is God's business to feed the snarling cub of the tiger 
and to hear the young lions that cry for food, to listen 



THE BUSINESS OF THE FATHER. 261 

to the stinging, humming mosquito, as well as to min- 
ister to the bodies and minds of men. It is well for us 
to enlarge our conception of the providence that takes 
in all things, great and small, obscure and prominent, 
mean and base, as well as noble and elevated. Only 
thus, can we get a conception of the place that a man 
occupies in nature, and in the thought and love of God. 

As we bring this closer to us, another word of Jesus 
comes up, how this, his Father's business, which so 
impressed his mind as a boy of twelve, afterwards de- 
veloped into his conception and habit of life : he went 
about preaching good news of the kingdom of God and 
healing all manner of diseases. 

For ages the relation of God to man has been treated 
in terms of philosophy as one of restoration and repair. 
We are to see God moving over this world, as after a 
great battle, the medical staff moves over the field gath- 
ering up the wounded and soothing the dying. A re- 
ligious philosophy which looks upon all men as lost, 
presents to us also the word salvation as comprehend- 
ing the larger part of the divine activity in human 
society ; and man as lost, drifting irresitibly over some 
terrible Niagara to dreadful death unless rescued. 

I listened not long ago to the examination of a min- 
ister who was to be ordained and installed as pastor of 
a church. His life, ever since he was a boy, had been 
the life of a student and a scholar. He had gone 
through primary and preparatory schools, through a 
college and then into a seminary, but in all this, the 
sight of a real, live, flesh and blood man, it seemed, 
had never passed before his eyes. I listened to the 
statemeut of his faith ; I listened to the answers he 
made to questions ; I listened to the words which I 
remembered to have heard long years ago in the sem- 
inary from which he came out. They had a far-off and 



262 THE BUSINESS OF THE FATHER. 

an unreal sound. I seemed to be walking the dim corri- 
dors of old monastic piles ; I seemed to be creeping 
about in the gray and mist of centuries long ago. I 
heard no word of to-day; I saw no sign of a concep- 
tion that God was in his world at work; I heard no 
note of life, only the dim, mumbling echo of a scholas- 
tic utterance when the world was younger and more 
hopeless, and ignorantly groped here and there among 
shapes and forms of things trying to understand the 
Creator's purpose in the world. I heard much of a 
philosophy of salvation and nothing of a word of life. 
I, who had been for twenty years among men and 
women — men with agonies in their hearts, with broken 
words upon their lips, bent down by much burden,, 
writhing in the grasp of some terrible habit — women 
sad of face, little children all unconscious, joyful, hope- 
ful, expectant young men and women with God's 
morning upon their foreheads — I heard no sound of' 
such experiences. It seemed to me as if I was listen- 
ing to those who were dealing with the history of some 
God who may have lived, but of no God who does 
live. 

The word of God is life. "I am come that they 
might have life," says Jesus, " and that they might 
have it more abundantly." Life, not, salvation. Salva- 
tion is a word that Jesus never used. I am come that 
men may live, may enjoy their life, may find out what 
powers are in their hearts and what faculties in their 
minds, what relation they sustain to the great power- 
above, our Father; what is their business here, how 
they may help the broken, and how they may lift the 
fallen. " I am come that men may have life, and that 
they may have it more abundantly." God is not here- 
repairing and restoring things alone. Preventive medi- 
cine is rapidly displacing remedial medicine. Where- 
of old seventy-two different elements entered into that 



THE BUSINESS OF THE FATHER. 263 

which was to give life to those that were sick, prevent- 
ive medicine anticipates the need and to-day asks, How 
shall we prevent loss of life and keep men and women 
from being ill ? 

I take it that the work of law in this world is not 
simply disentangling the confusions of men, not simply 
winning a case for this man and punishing that man ; 
but it is the endeavor to institute justice between man 
and man, to so state the principles of social order that 
men shall not quarrel and men shall not err. I under- 
stand the work of government is no longer simply to 
protect a man while he pushes his plane or swings his 
scythe, or stands behind his counter ; but to see to it 
that all shall have the privileges of each ; to see to it 
that the weakest has not only justice, but opportunity. 
Preventive government is to take the place of the old 
protective government. I understand the great work 
of reform to-day is not simply to relieve those that are 
hungry, is not simply to confine those that have done 
wrong, but to heal, to help, to place a man on his feet 
again, to anticipate the falling of little children, and 
long before they are neglected to have gathered them 
into some home and pressed them to some mother's or 
father's bosom, that love may so protect them and may 
so prevent their knowledge of evil that they shall not 
go wrong. 

I understand God's business in this world is not sal- 
vation alone ; that is a little part of it. It is not res- 
toration alone ; that is but a phase of it. It is not re- 
pair ; that is a small portion of it. But it is utilizing all 
the forces that are as yet unlimited and unexhausted, 
that children shall be born to happy homes and joyful 
parents ; shall be so surrounded by education and by 
the conditions of a happier and purer society that they 
shall not go astray, that they shall not fall into evil, 
that they shall have no taint of sin upon them. There 



'264: THE BUSINESS OF THE FATHER. 

shall be no need of their being born twice, since God's 
first birth is good enongh for all and suffices for all, if 
nothing conies to prevent the perfect development of 
his plan. 

Each child starts from God to-day. if bound some- 
what in limb and confined in faculty, at least free of 
- __::. with infinite time and infinite opportunity out of 
which to develop its life. And at last, every man. 
woman and child shall come to his ultimate development 
of perfection of every faculty, employment of every 
power, and the enjoyment of all this variegated uni- 
verse of God. 

This is God's business in the world. This is that on 
which he works night and day. TTe sleep, but the 
forces of nature never sleep. \Ve dream, but there is 
no dreaming in the restless, quiet energy of God. TTe 
make spasmodic effort and put forth feverish power, 
but all that God works "is effortless and calm. High 
on his throne a;:: _ r. in loftiest ray serene, there. 
though we know not how, he works his quiet will." 
All great work, says Ruskin. is easily done. One can 
not conceive the immense mind of Shakspere ever 
stopping to ask what he shall say next. He moves, 
the m: st gigantic of human minds, over all the world, 
interpreting the little meannc-- :: Christopher Sly, 
penetrating the mind of Iago. entering the sublime 
9 : rrow of Lear and understanding the immense power 
:: Othello. 

Here is the conception of the nniverse as God's 
place of business, with organism and system and sci- 
ence ; employment of power, and engagement and adap- 
tation of the littlest things to the larges: issnes. This 
is the work in which we have our part and place. Each 
of us fits in somewhere: to us the question of place 
and use is the supreme question, "WTiy are you troub- 
led, says Jesus, about questions of food and clothing 



THE BUSINESS 01 THE FATHER. 265 

and shelter; your Heavenly Father knows all about 
these things, and has provided for them : for you the 
supreme question of life is, where is my place and what 
ifi my work? Seek ye first place and use and all 
things will be added. 

It is as an engagement in part of this great work that 
we welcome this National Conference of Charities and 
Correction. There will gather here half a thousand 
men and women who have heard God's call, the call of 
some one or other of God's little ones, and have re- 
sponded to it and officially or in voluntary ways Ik 
set themselves to work to restore that which is wander- 
ing, to lift up that which is prostrate, and to introduce 
some order and method into the endeavor of man to 
help his fellow-men. For seventeen years this simple 
organization, which has no creed, no constitution, not 
a by-law, not a condition of membership, has met and 
debated and thought and disappeared. It has pro- 
pounded no universal remedy for the ills and sorrows 
of mankind, no one remedv which will heal the lis- 
eases of humanity: but its ear is open to listen, its ej 
is open to see and its heart is open to love. It is with- 
out form, it meets in the unity of the spirit. " Diver- 
sities of worship," said the Persian, ; - had divided man- 
kind into seventy-two religions : from all their dogmas 
I have selected one — divine love:" and this is the onlv 
dogma which these people have. They believe iii the 
love of God, and in the life of the universe, and that it 

not the will of God that one of these little ones shall 
perish. 

Cheerful and hopeful, they do life's business. In 
natural, which are therefore divine, methods, they pro- 
ceed to do that which they have undertaken to do. 
They have displaced many an old custom, and there 
yet linger in insane asylums as curiosities the old shack- 
les and beds which were once frequent, but are now no 



266 THE BUSINESS OF THE FATHER. 

longer used. The chains have fallen from the prisoner, 
and the very name of prison has disappeared. I do not 
know of anything that pictures progress more than the 
replacement of old names. The spirit of Jesus at first 
affected the world in the spirit of pity and sought to 
relieve ; built refuges and asylums, or shut men up in 
prison houses and in penitential places, where, brood- 
ing over their past life and doing penance, they might 
possibly come to a higher life. But the truer insight 
as to the spirit of Jesus has displaced every old idea. 
We no longer work so much in the spirit of pity, 
though that must always be the first gropings of love, 
as in the spirit of hope. Over no place is the old word 
written, " All hope abandon, ye who enter here ;" but 
over every place — and there is no place so dark but 
what these words may be seen, " Hope ye who enter 
here." For the old word prison we use the new word re- 
formatory ; for the old word reformatory and peniten- 
tiary, we use the new word school. 

We do believe that education of the hand, of the 
heart, of the mind, will dissipate all these old-time 
habits of evil. We believe that men have gone wrong 
through ignorance of what is right, and early warping of 
the will, partly through heredity and partly through as- 
sociation, and not as the result of original sin. The little 
children who used to be gathered into prisons and into 
reformatories, are now in children's homes, or, better 
than that, in private homes where personal love gives 
them that which they have lacked. Where once men 
said : This is a mad-house, this is an insane asylum, 
they now say this is an insane hospital. Where once the 
insane were gathered simply to care for them, they are 
now brought for medical treatment. So over the whole 
world a new spirit, the spirit of hope and life, enters, 
and the business of God is done by such men and 



THE BUSINESS OF THE FATHER. 267 

women. This business in which we have a share be- 
longs to no group or party ; it is the business that be- 
longs to us all. Along with the work that we do with 
the hand for daily bread, must be the work that we do 
with the heart for daily love. There must be large 
leisure in life to gather little children and tell them 
stories ; to talk to those that are discouraged ; to lift up 
those that are fallen, and to encourage those that are 
hopeless. 

There is plenty of margin in life. It is really be- 
lieved by some economists that the time will come 
when in four hours a man can do all that needs to be 
done to get him food and clothing and shelter, leaving 
him the other hours for the uses of the larger, the 
kinder and the sweeter life. God speed that day. As 
I think of those that are coming here I know how 
human helpfulness largely springs out of human sor- 
row. I can not understand why death should enter and 
should lay waste this family, why sickness should sap 
strength, and pain should twist this muscle, or writhe 
that nerve ; but this I do know, that all human help- 
fulness springs out of some one's pain or grief, and 
even as beautiful roses grow about graves, so human 
helpfulness has come out of some sorrow. 

As but one illustration I give this : There will stand 
upon this platform one day this week a gracious, noble 
lady, nobly born, and within her veins the blood that 
is purified by generations of culture and sweet, no- 
ble living. She was a bride of four months, when 
her husband was killed in the first battle of Bull Eun, 
and her brother fell in the attack at Fort Wagner, 
the Colonel of the First Colorado Regiment. He died 
with his men and was buried with them. After this 
great loss there came to her the awful paralysis of a 
stunned nature. For one year she never left her house 
— brooding over her sorrow. Even the coming of a 



268 THE BUSINESS OF THE FATHER. 

little girl to her only fringed the edges of her grief with 
a silver lining. One day her father came to her and 
said : " There is living in the next street a woman who 
is sick, and they say she has two children. She is in 
great need. I wish you would go and talk with her and 
see what you can do." " Oh, father," she said, " give her 
money, give her all she wants, hut don't ask me to go 
to her. I can not do it." " My daughter," he said, 
" no one can help her hut you. She needs a woman's 
help, and she needs love, and not money." " I can 
not go," she said, "find some one else." "My daugh- 
ter," he said, " she is a widow — a soldier's widow. Her 
hushand was killed at the first battle of Bull Run, 
where your hushand was killed." And then she went, 
and she took up her life at that time, and she moves in 
and out now, wherever there is need of her presence, 
by gracious manner and by wonderful mind bringing 
order out of confusion. A friend said : " I saw her 
twice ; once she and her sister, neither of them married, 
came into a ball-room in ~New York, and all stopped to 
look at that vision of beauty. The next time I saw her 
was when I was Attorney General, she came to plead the 
cause of some little child in the city of New York. 
Those are the pictures I have of her." She has been a 
member of the State Board of Charities of E"ew York; 
she has been interested in every work, large and great, 
that makes for the helping of men. God's business 
has become her business. She has buried her sorrow. 
Her grief has become the help of many. 

Last week I was invited to be with her and others in 
a great hall where a celebration was to be held, because 
two thousand insane people who had been cared for 
miserably by counties, were now to be cared for gener- 
ously and thoughtfully by states ; and that work is as 
much hers as it can be said to be the work of any 
human being. 



THE BUSINESS OF THE FATHER. 269 

Therefore, good friends, I say this : God's business 
is our business, and we learn to do the business of God 
in its deeper things only by the teaching of some great 
spiritual experience, like pain, disappointment, agony 
or sorrow. It may seem to us expensive education, 
that it should cost the life of this baby, that young 
girl, this boy, that splendid youth, or this helpful, 
noble lady, wife or sister, to teach us our true relation 
to our fellow-men. We can not deal with God in terms 
of dollars and cents. We ask, in the words of Judas, 
to what purpose was this waste? but the higher voice 
says : " What I do thou knowest not now ; thou shalt 
know hereafter." And we hear again this word of the 
boy Christ : " I must be about my Father's business," 
and God's business is bringing life into this world. 



THE VALUE OF A HUMAN SOUL. 



272 THE VALUE OF A HUMAN SOUL. 



God, we come in the love which Jesus Christ has 
for us, and which we have learned to have for each 
other and for Thee. We catch glimpses of what love 
must be since we are taught that God so loved the 
world that he gave his only begotten son that whoso- 
ever believeth in him might not perish — not lose life — 
but might find it. Life comes to us in all its varied 
expressions, but not one of us has ever yet known what 
it is to live, to see life full. The fragments of life are 
about us, but what the great completed whole of it 
might be, none of us has yet known. We have had 
ecstatic moments, times when feeling was full and flood- 
like, when the vision was clear, when it seemed to us 
as if this, indeed, was to live ; but then this flood of 
life has been followed by its ebb, and we have floun- 
dered in shallows and in miseries. 

We have seen pictures of beauty and heard tones of 
sweetness. We have had little children in our arms 
and in our families. We have known friends. And 
all these indications of love and of life have taught us 
that some time, somewhere, the human soul shall come 
to its fullness of stature. Little children have come 
into our families and lingered for a little time, a few or 
more years, and then, with all the promise of life about 
them, have gone out into death. And young men and 
young women, just at the threshold of life, have sud- 
denly stopped, and to our mortal sight have disap- 
peared, and we are continually haunted by this feeling,, 
that life, so large in promise, must have its completion, 
and so much that is begun must have its fulfillment. 
None of us has ever yet seen a completed, filled-out 
life. None of us has ever yet known one who fulfilled 
all the promise of his beginning, but even as a blight 



THE VALUE OF A HUMAN SOUL. 273 

comes to some opening flower, or as an arrest of devel- 
opment to something that is just coming toward its 
perfection, so it seems ordained for human life, for some 
reason that we can not understand, to stop short of 
what it might he. It is from these hints that we can 
infer what must be the life if it were rounded out to 
its fullness, as it is in God's thought. We have not 
yet attained, neither are we already perfect. Each 
of us must say this for himself, for herself, and each of 
us must affirm it for the great ones of the earth. No 
one has yet attained to the measure of the stature of 
the fullness which God has in his thought for human 
nature. 

These hints and suggestions, these glimpses and frag- 
ments are that out of which we build our hope and our 
expectation of the stronger race and the perfect man 
and <th.e completed life — that at some time and at some 
place God will bring to its completeness this promise of 
life. We press on ; we are not satisfied with any day's 
attainment. We reach and grasp that which we long 
for, only to find that it is not what we thought it was. 
The most perfect love lacks something of the satisfac- 
tion which the soul seeks. So we go on and on, our 
ideal constantly changing before us, and we know we 
are moving in a vast circle, that we can not complete it 
in seventy years of life. No one can complete it. The 
most gigantic intellect, the largest sweep of vision, the 
most perfect love — nothing can complete it. We are 
moving in an infinite circle, and shall never be satisfied 
until we awake in Thy likeness. 

Thou art the fulfillment of all our thought, O God. 
Thou art the answer to all our questions. Thou art 
the satisfaction for all our thirst in life, and when we 
see Thee as Thou art, we shall come to be like Thee. 
We know the value of the human soul in part. We 
have known what it is to have, to hold and to lose, to 

18 



274 THE VALUE OF A HUMAN SOUL. 

love and to lose sight of that which we love. But, O 
God, we thank Thee for the hope that grows brighter 
and the faith that is firmer, that that which is incom- 
plete shall come to its completion. Thou dost not play 
fast and loose with human souls. Thou dost not juggle 
with these hopes and faiths of the human mind. "We 
can trust Thee, and we will trust Thee, that sometime, 
the value of the human soul, the perfection of it, shall 
be seen and known. That which is unfinished shall be 
completed; that which is a broken fragment, seem- 
ingly, shall build itself into the fair and completed edi- 
fice of manhood or womanhood, as God saw it in the 
creation. 

And now, we thank Thee for good men and women 
that have been. We thank Thee for our ecstatic mo- 
ments. We thank Thee for our imperfect love, for our 
unsatisfied desire, and our unquenched thirst. It is our 
sign of life, and we will press on and on, though we 
slip much and fall often, though we fail in attainment, 
though we sin, and though we sorrow, we will press 
on, until at last we attain and apprehend that for 
which Thou hast also apprehended us in Christ Jesus. 
Our better self, the Christ of history and the Christ of 
the ideal, our better self shall be before us, and we will 
not be satisfied until at last we have come to be like 
him, since we see him as he is ; and every one that hath 
this hope purifieth himself even as the Christ is pure, 
from all unholy living — from all untrue things, and 
from all unjust dealing and from all unkindness. 

We pray Thee that Thou wilt bless us this morning, 
strengthen that which is weak, lift up that which is 
fallen down, comfort all sorrow, restore all that wan- 
der, forgive all that have sinned, through Jesus Christ, 
our Lord. 



THE VALUE OF A HUMAN SOUL. 



' ' For ivhat shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, 
and lose his own soul 1 Or what shall a man give in exchange for 
his soul f 

Maek viii, 36, 37. 

i^^HESE are familiar words to us, my friends. We 
4v^ have heard from them much and strange preach- 
^v ing. They are usually employed to emphasize 
the necessity of the acceptance of that plan of salvation 
which shall secure for us freedom from suffering in the 
world that is to come. But I make hold to say that 
that was not the thought of Jesus when he uttered 
them. He was rather thinking upon the transcend- 
ent value of every human soul, when looked at 
in the light of its history and in the light of 
its destiny. It was not a warning against possible 
suffering and loss, so much as it was an urging that we 
should understand the worth and value of ourselves, 
for the word soul and the word self are the same thing. 
And he asks us to consider what it shall profit a man 
if he should gain the whole world and lose himself, or 
what shall a man give in exchange for himself? 

The teaching falls into line with that of the value of 
a little child, as when he said : " Suffer little children 
to come unto me," and, "except ye he converted and 
become as little children, ye can not enter into the king- 
dom of heaven," and, " whoso shall cause a little child 
to offend, it were better for him that a mill stone were 
hanged about his neck and he were cast into the depths 



276 THE VALUE OF A HUMAN SOUL. 

of the sea." It falls into line also with the teaching of 
the 15th chapter of Luke, when the disciples wondered 
that he consorted with the despised people of his time. 
Jesus, in those exquisite parables of the lost sheep, the 
lost money and the lost son, said : " There is joy among 
the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth." In- 
dicating the transcendent value of even lost lives, of 
despised and outcast men and women. 

So we must interpret this thought in the light of all 
the teaching of Jesus — the value of a human soul — the 
inestimable value of it, so that compared with it there 
is nothing of equal worth in all this wide, round world. 
And if it were possible to gain the whole world, its 
power, its pleasure and its wealth, it would be but a 
poor exchange, if when a man held, or seemed to hold 
it, himself, his capacity for enjoyment and for employ- 
ment were gone, and it would be as if the most pre- 
cious jewel were held in the fLeshless hand of a skeleton. 

The value of a human soul, or of the individual man, 
woman or child, is something that is rising in the 
world's estimation — how much it is rising we rarely 
think, we do not realize. If you will study the litera- 
ture of this century, you will see that it has completely 
changed its front, and that it is dealing now — whether 
in novel, in scientific investigation, or in poetic expres- 
sion — it is dealing largely with the question of the 
human soul. When you read the novels or the poems 
of Walter Scott you seem to have left this nineteenth 
century. The men and women of Walter Scott are not 
like the men and women of our day ; and the novels 
and poems of Walter Scott are not those of our time. 
They are men and women on a large scale. There is 
no introspection in the gaze which they cast upon each 
other or upon themselves. They deal with life as a 
mass and not as individuals. They do not seem to be 
conscious that they have souls. The processes of" 



- THE VALUE OP A HUMAN SOUL. 277 

thought and feeling are to them unknown. They have 
a vague regret and occasionally a deep remorse, but 
none of that subtle analysis of feeling or that uncover- 
ing of soul which characterizes our literature and our 
life to-day. And as it is true of Walter Scott, it is 
much more true of those who were before him — of Shak- 
spere's people. Shakspere is a splendid pagan. He 
deals with life not in the Christian sense. Those are 
splendid vices that we have there — passions that sweep 
like the whirlwind, but whose force no one takes ac- 
count of. His villains are not like ours, who, perhaps, 
-study their litany, and whose regret and remorse are 
not estimated by psychological rules ; but who sin with 
force and who regret passionately.* Mrs. Quickley, 
describing the death of Falstaff, says : " So 'a cried 
out, God — God ! God ! three or four times. Now I, to 
comfort him, bid him, 'a should not think of God. I 
hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any 
such thoughts yet." 

To call upon God, to think upon the question of re- 
ligion, to interrogate the thoughts that pass through 
the soul, to analyze its feelings, was not the character- 
istic of that century at all. But it is of ours. The 
petty passions and the shallow sorrows of Hetty Sor- 
rel; the analysis of the splendid love and sorrow of 
Adam Bede ; the processes of change by which Robert 
Elsmere, from a faithful follower of the Church of 
England, becomes at last cast upon the great, wide sea 
•of doubt — all these would seem strange reading to those, 
our grandfathers and ancestors, a hundred years ago. 
But they are not strange to us. Every novel now is 
the analysis of some human condition, an analysis of 
passionate love or of passionate hate, of diseased pro- 
cesses. "We are studying the condition, the character- 
istics of the human soul. It is a mystery to us. Psy- 
chology, one of the latest of the sciences, has tried, to a 



278 THE VALUE OF A HUMAN SOUL. 

certain extent, to make plain to ns its powers, its fac- 
ulties, its capacities and its diseased and sorrowful 
conditions. But we do not know yet what it is. It 
is a mysterious something, our self, come from far, 
the product of vast centuries, tremulous with feeling, 
wavering in will, irresolute at times, passionate in hope 
and yet passionate in regret, strong and weak, clear 
and dark, good and evil, and yet not understood. And 
the study of ourselves is the proper, as it is the most 
fascinating study of the day. Our fiction simply rep- 
resents the trend of our thinking. Our science is try- 
ing to solve the last mystery there is, the mystery of 
the human soul. Our education is trying to prohe the 
mysteries of the child's mind. 

In our new philanthropy, we are afraid of doing in- 
justice to the insane, we are afraid of doing injustice- 
to the criminal. We seek to recover sight and privi- 
lege for the blind. We feel what a loss they sustain in 
God's beautiful, bountiful world. We think of the 
feeble-minded, groping uncertainly out into God's great 
universe. In a thousand ways we are trying to esti- 
mate the powers, the capacities of the human soul. 
That is the chief study of to-day. Our science, our 
philanthropy, our social reform, everything, turns on 
this : What is a human soul ? what is its value for 
time ? what is its value for eternity ? Thus, the fact of 
the mystery, the possible loss, the danger of misleading, 
rests like a shadow upon us. 

With regard to our children, it is not a simple ques- 
tion any more how to bring them up. What if we 
should by neglect, by false teaching, by dull moral dis- 
criminations, by distasteful example, cause them to suf- 
fer loss for a time ? The blind lack one of the senses, 
and God's beautiful universe can not report itself to 
them. What if we should blind our children's spiritual 
sight so that they could not see ? The deaf can not hear 



THE VALUE OF A HUMAN SOUL. 279 

music, none of the harmonies. What if something we 
should do should lose for the human soul its spiritual 
hearing? "What if it could not express itself? The 
doubt is cast upon our home education, and the ques- 
tion is put to our school education. What if we should 
cause them to suffer loss ? A sense of the mysterious- 
ness of the human soul, the complex nature of it, the 
danger of doing wrong to it, rolls in upon us as parent 
and teacher, again and again. 

It used to be easy to punish a man who had done 
wrong. All we had to do was to shut him up in a 
prison for one, or five, or thirty years of life, but sud- 
denly criminal anthropology rolls in upon us these awful 
questions : How do you know whether it will help 
him ? Have you ever probed the recesses of his brain ? 
Do you know what strains are mingled with it ? Have 
you noticed how his head bulges at the top, or how it 
is depressed? The study of criminal anthropology has 
made the punishment of men for crime the most neces- 
sary, as it is the most painful question that can present 
itself to any thoughtful person. So these questions 
come upon us as problems, until at last we ask, what 
can we do ? Here is a mysterious soul in danger of de- 
ranging its delicate influence, of poisoning the very 
sources of its action, of confusing it in its endeavor to 
find out what is right. This is not morbid ; it is sim- 
ply a phase of evolution ; it is God's law of action and 
reaction. 

We have been dealing with the material universe. 
We have been studying the strata of the earth and 
reading what is written upon the stone pages of na- 
ture's book. We have been trying to solve the mys- 
teries of the heavens with the tube of the telescope. 
We. have been trying to systematize our knowledge of 
this universe as to its material things. But this world 
is not one thing, it is always two things. It is always 



280 THE VALUE OF A HUMAN SOUL. 

dual. And where we have been trying to emphasize 
the material life, unconsciously to ourselves, we have 
been trying to analyze the immaterial soul. It is the 
reaction from the material study of things that throws 
us back upon our souls. We are questioning to-day 
more than ever, not whether we have souls, but what 
these souls mean, of which we have become so pain- 
fully, so awfully conscious. I say to-day, although 
men may think that they are ignoring the question 
of a human soul, it is here, as a mysterious presence, 
as a problem the most abstruse ever presented to the 
mind to solve. It has questions the most persistent as 
to what we shall do with them. Literature and sci- 
ence, history and philanthrophy, penology and social 
reform, all come to us with this question as to the 
worth and value of a human soul. 

And now this question which Jesus asks, you see, is 
not any mere question as to whether I shall put my 
soul on the one side and pleasure and wealth on the 
other ; it is not trying to save me from any pain or suf- 
fering beyond; it is saying, my friend, did you ever 
stop to think what this self is with which you think 
you are acquainted? What its present value is, how 
ancient its history, how awful its destiny, hew compli- 
cated its structure, how subtle its processes, how awful 
the actualities of its loss, how wonderful the possi- 
bilities of its gain ? As if he should take every one of 
us and cause to pass before us the splendor of the 
world, and then make us conscious that our soul was 
worth more than anything that was in the earth, even 
if we could gain it all. 

What a poor exchange it would be, if we could pos- 
sibly exchange the world and yet have lost this soul, 
its powers to think, its capacities to enjoy, its splendid 
memories, its bright hopes, its tender sympathies, its 
passionate loves, lost everything which we find in it, 



THE VALUE OF A HUMAN SOUL. 281 

and which makes it other than a mere dead lump of 
clay. And this has been the characteristic of Chris- 
tianity, its sense of the infinite value of the human 
soul. Emerson says that Jesus was the only one ever 
in the world who knew what a human soul was worth. 
Channing says that Christianity is characterized by 
this sense of the infinite value of the human soul. 
Lecky says that wherever societies have gathered in a 
Christian name, there has risen a sense of the value of 
human life and the value of a human soul. And Jesus 
expresses this, when he says, of a little child, an out- 
cast man or woman deformed by sin, disfigured by loss, 
ground down by oppression, ostracised by public opin- 
ion, there lies an infinitely valuable soul. 

We ourselves have glimpses of the value of this soul, 
but none of us can ever realize it. The first time a lit- 
tle child was ever put into our arms and we learned to 
love our own children, or when we followed them up 
through the opening years of life and saw the dawn- 
ing there of splendid powers and faculties, somehow 
slowly coming out, reaching into the beautiful universe, 
we have seen outlines of the soul. A little child is con- 
tinually scintillating brightness, flashes from the in- 
terior soul, out upon us. We are never tired listening 
to the bright things they say, the unexpected turns 
they take, the deep questions they ask or the philo- 
sophic explanations that they make. You may take 
the child of a beggar, and there is the same wonderful 
wealth of possibility there as in our own child. 

We have known good men and women in this world ; 
we have made many pilgrimages and visited shrines ; 
these, too, have helped us by their fragmentary expres- 
sion, to realize what value of goodness there is in the 
human soul. We have seen the sacrifices of mothers ; 
we have heard of the martyred saints. We know what 
goodness means in part, and yet nothing that we ever 



282 THE VALUE OF A HUMAN SOUL. 

knew seemed to exhaust the possibilities of goodness 
that were in human souls. Goodness is another frag- 
mentary expression of the wealth there is in a human 
soul. We are acquainted with minds like that of 
Newton, and jet with all its splendid power, we feel 
that it was only beginning its great quest. Great 
minds are fragmentary expressions of the intellectual 
powers of the human soul. The art of ages that are 
past and the art that is here to-day, with its sense of 
that which is beautiful and its power of expressing it, 
are other fragmentary expressions of the sense and 
power of beauty with which the human soul is charged. 

Beautiful as is the past or present, we feel that the 
power of beauty in the human soul has not yet been 
exhausted. Hardly have its fountains been unsealed. 
The goodness of soul, the strength of intellect, the 
sense of beauty and of power of expressing it, the 
bright flashings out of nature in a little child — all these 
are but simple hints and suggestions, glimpses of the 
powers and the capacities that are in a human soul. 
No one yet has ever realized them in full. No life has 
ever swept in full circle. When we go to the great 
geniuses of the past, we find they have emphasized one 
power to the loss of another, that splendid genius has 
sometimes been associated with depravity of moral 
life. We have seen that the most wonderful intellect 
may at times be dissociated from what we may think 
its complemental goodness ; and we may find goodness 
often without any sweep of intellect and without any 
appreciative power of beauty. 

Life is fragmentary. The soul looks through only 
one of its many windows at a time. No one has 
rounded up its possibilities. It is always incomplete, 
and yet out of all these fragments we build an ideal 
life. We think that it would be possible some time 
— we do not know that this world will afford the 



THE VALUE OF A HUMAN SOUL. 283 

opportunity — but some time a man shall come to full 
stature and complete life. We can think that a great 
intellect that can read the history of this world, of 
its past order written in stone or written in star, can 
be associated with a sense of beauty so delicate as 
to see, a power of expression so great as to tell all 
that is beautiful in flower and sunrise and sunset and 
human face. We can think, perhaps, of this won- 
derful intellect, this wonderful sense of that which is 
beautiful as being associated with a heart so full of love 
that all humanity might gather in and find its home 
there ; an eye which fills with tears at every sight of 
sorrow ; an ear which is delicately sensitive to every 
moan and every grief; one that reaches its hand out 
and uses the splendid endowment of its intellect and its 
genius simply to lift others up. If we could see or 
know such a life as that, we could have some faint con- 
ception of what are the powers and capacities of the 
human soul. We get glimpses of it ourselves. 

' ' Below the surface stream, shallow and light, 
Of what we say we feel — below the stream 
As light, of what we think we feel — there flows 
With noiseless current, strong, obscure and deep, 
The central stream of what we feel, indeed." 

And so we throw this light back upon this word of 
Jesus, and say, " What should it profit a man if he gain 
the whole world and lose himself?" There would be 
nothing of appreciation within, no powers of measure- 
ment, no means of weighing, no sense of value, no op- 
portunities of realization. It would be a dead cinder 
soul that would be left, even if such an exchange would 
be possible. And this is why, dear friends, there is com- 
ing upon the consciousness of the world as never be- 
fore, the value of a man, a woman or a little child, the 
value of the human as compared to which governments 



284 THE VALUE OF A HUMAN SOUL. 

and laws and treasuries and navies are nothing. The 
man is everything. Jesus said the Sabbath was made 
for man, and not man for the Sabbath. The church 
was made for man, and not man for the church. Gov- 
ernments were made for man, and not man for govern- 
ments. The man is everything, the unit of value, the 
standard of measurement, that by which we compute 
everything. 

So our literature is charged with this analysis of 
human nature — what is the human soul? A novelist 
is one who is able to enter into and read a little of the 
riddle. He is greatest in drama or in fiction who can 
tell us most of these processes ; but how little does he 
know. The tragedies of life go on, and no tragedy of 
the Greeks or of Shakspere is equal to the tragedies 
that are in our houses to-day. The comedies of life go 
on, the laughter that ripples, but no comedy so delicate 
as the little comedies and laughters of our own homes. 
So our science is positing everything on this political 
economy. Men exist for it. Things gather about it. 
It is simply a question of gain. But to-day a human 
soul is weighed rather than a bushel of wheat, and now 
we say there is no economy, no law, no institution, 
but that must be brought to the measure of the 
standard of the goodness and the happiness of man. 
This is the new science. This is the new sense of value, 
the transcendent value of a human soul. To this, as I 
have said, all things are coming. With this thought, 
we enter into the prison house and seek to do justice 
to the prisoner. We open the door of the insane 
asylum lest by any means we have shut up those who 
ought to have the privileges of life. We take our 
wealth and lay it at the feet of the defective, the blind 
and the sorrowful, and we say our treasure is nothing 
if we can give you sight, hearing, comfort ; if we can 



THE VALUE OF A HUMAN SOUL. 285 

make you stand on your feet and look around and en- 
joy God's earth. 

This is the great appeal which a man makes to the 
world. All that I hope to be, all that men ignore in 
me, a man says, that I am worth to God. Men take us 
at what they think is our value. God takes us at the 
value we have in his sight, and so we say that which I 
wanted to be but am not, that which I willed to be, 
but was not able to become, that which I hoped to be 
but never realized, that am 1 worth to God, and that 
which I am worth to God shall some time come to its 
full value. With this thought, we look upon our little 
children. We dare not juggle with them, or experi- 
ment with them. They are worth so much. The loss 
is so great if we should make a mistake. We try to do 
the best we can. 

The revelation" of God to man is in his own con- 
sciousness of that which is right and true and good. 
Higher than this can no man attain, to live to the level 
of his highest thought, for that is God's thought of him. 



THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH. 



THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH. 

" The just shall live by faith." 
Hebrews x, 38. 



" Noiv abideth faith.' ' 
I Corinthians, xiii, 13. 

4^5pHE just shall live by faith. The word just means 
4J^^ the righteous nian, the man of integrity, the man 
cT^ who is trying to do right, and who is living to 
the level of his best thought. Faith, whatever it is, is 
something which he is to live by, to use every day as 
he is to use his hand to touch and grasp, and as he 
uses his eye to see and his ear to hear. Faith is not 
something to be put on as your Sunday coat, that you 
are to approach as } 7 ou do the Sabbath day, with a cer- 
tain formality and custom. Faith is something which 
is to stand intimately related to the daily uses of the 
human soul. Now, the word faith, familiar as it is to 
us, has certain varying meanings. It may mean trust 
or confidence. One man has faith in another, that is, 
he believes in the man's integrity, his honesty of deal- 
ing, his truth of word, and he trusts him with his prop- 
erty, with his person, with his honor. That is faith in 
its simplest and most natural form. Faith, however, 
may be another thing. The convictions on which a 
trust rests — to those are sometimes given the name 

19 



290 THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH. 

faith. My faith is my belief. On it I rest my confi- 
dence and my trust. My belief is in the truth of a cer- 
tain thing, in the body of truths which are offered for 
my acceptance. The sum of my convictions makes my 
faith, and so the word faith is sometimes used in this 
way. " The Christian faith," the body of its doctrine, 
the sum of its teachings, the gathering together of its 
great truths — these make up, if we could only know 
what they are, the Christian faith, the faith once deliv- 
ered to the saints. 

Again, I say, on these convictions we rest our confi- 
dence, our trust. And faith has yet another meaning, 
and it is this : it is that power or faculty by means of 
which we see things that can not be seen by the eye and 
hear things that can not be heard by the ear. It is that 
power or faculty by which we penetrate the outlying, 
invisible or spiritual world, and bring back to the soul 
reports of what is to be found therein. Here are three 
uses of the word faith. They are interlinked. One 
depends upon the other. With this power or faculty 
of the soul, we enter into the great spiritual world and 
bring back certain truths, and these being tested by 
life, become to us convictions or confidences, and on 
them we rest our lives or our trust. 

First, then, goes this searcher of the invisible, this 
fine faculty, this persistent power, of the nature of 
which we know very little, and can not define, out into 
the outlying, invisible or spiritual world, and brings 
back to us certain reports. We test these in life. We 
prove our soul by experiment. Some of them are false 
reports. Some of them are intermixed with error. 
Some of them are actual and awful truths. These sink 
down into our nature, as they have into the soul of the 
world, and become its great convictions, its abiding 
truths, and it is these which lead us to trust nature and 
God. ' 



THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH. 291 

Now, faith is a word which we can use easily, but 
can not easily understand. It is allied with, if it is not 
the .same as, imagination. Imagination is a word 
which is familiar to us, the image-making power of the 
mind. We all of us picture to ourselves certain things 
that are not present. There is a certain power or fac- 
ulty within us, by which we can call up past things. 
Not only that, we can call up things which we never 
experienced, which are a part of history. We can 
imagine situations in which we have never been. We 
can call up faces that we have never seen. We have an 
imaginary picture gallery of the saints and the prophets 
and the heroes of the world. We have an imaginary 
picture of every character of Shakespeare, and no actor 
that has ever attempted to portray, or reader that has 
ever attempted to express them, gives us the accurate 
picture which is made upon our imagination by our 
reading and our thinking. 

Imagination, or the image-making power of a man 
is that which the lover uses to call up the beloved 
face and form and voice. By the use of imagina- 
tion, parents bring back their little dead children, and 
live with them again ; hear their voices, see the play 
of light about their faces ; or, following them on into 
the developments of their life, picture them as grow- 
ing or as coming into new and joyful experiences. 
Imagination, says Ruskin, is that, in its first and no- 
blest use, which brings to us sensibly that which be- 
longs to our future, or that which is invisibly connected 
with our present. Imagination, says Maudsley, the 
great English student of the mind, is the survival in 
us of the creative energy in the universe. That which 
created out of nothing, or that which created out of 
simple things, forms of wonderful beauty in the uni- 
verse, is in us to-day, the same creative energy, build- 
ing new and beautiful worlds. Imagination, says Mrs. 



292 THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH. 

Browning, is that which brings down the choirs of 
singing angels from above which are overshone by 
God's great glory and which sing to us along the .way 
by every hedge we walk. Imagination, says Tyndall, 
is that by which we see things which can not be heard, 
felt or seen. Through imagination, and its scientific 
use, Newton discovered the law of gravitation ; as Dar- 
win, the law of natural selection ; and by means of his 
imagination the whole universe became lucid to Far- 
aday. Imagination and faith are simply words for the 
same thing, for what imagination is in the lower planes 
of life, faith is in the higher, when we come to see and 
therefore know the truths and the ideas which are in 
the world outside of sense. 

Faith is that power or faculty of our souls which 
lives in the world that is remote from sense and out- 
side that which is material, bringing from it great 
thoughts and truths which inspire life, which soothe 
and quiet it, which stimulate and strengthen it, and 
make us walk as along a sacred way. These are sim- 
ple illustrations of something that can not be explained. 
We are conscious of this faculty or power. We use it 
continually in life. It is in little children. It is, in 
crude form, in savages. It is the most brilliant poses- 
sion of the artist and the poet. It is the light of beauty 
that plays about everything. It is with the hero as he 
lives for his country, and dies for it, to found the ideal 
righteousness in the state. This is. faith. Now, the 
just man shall live by this, not use it once in seven 
days, not use it when he comes to die, but use it as he 
uses his breath, in order to vitalize his life ; use it as 
he uses his eye, with which to inform himself of sizes 
and qualities of things ; as he uses his ear or his hand — 
something not too good for daily need. 

I spoke to you last Sunday morning of the value of a 
human soul, taking that word of Jesus, charged with 



THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH. 293 

-such wonderful meaning : " What should it profit a 
man if he should gain the whole world and lose him- 
self? " — trying to show what an infinite value a soul 
has ; how full of great mysteries it is ; this wonderful 
soul which each one has that is horn into this world. 
'Now, this soul in its development has a certain natural 
history. There is a natural history of this flower which 
the botanist can tell us. He can trace most of the pro- 
cesses from the seed, and the development of its germ, 
through all its changes, until at last it comes full circle 
to seed again. That is the natural history of a plant, 
and there is the natural history of the development of 
an animal from the ovum or the egg through all the 
•changes which life takes, until at last, the body crum- 
bles apart again. 

And there is a natural history in the development of 
a soul. It passes through certain changes, enters cer- 
tain stages, one above the other; comes to certain 
experiences ; develops more and more power, and en- 
larges itself in capacity. Souls are not born complete 
into this earth. They do not come full statured and in 
the perfection of knowledge. When one is a child he 
speaks as a child, he understands as a child ; when he 
becomes a man he puts away childish things. And 
this soul of ours has just such changes and such experi- 
ences, such growths as give it what we call a natural 
history. Now, at first, we come into touch with the 
material universe. The soul is put in communication 
with the universe of God through the eye, the ear, the 
hand, the nose, the tongue. These are the gates of the 
senses. Through them, and, so far as we know, 
through nothing else than these, the manifold, much 
variegated universe of G-od reports itself to us in its 
qualities and its relations. The eye recognizes the dis- 
tinctions of color and form ; the ear the sounds which 
are made by vibrating substances ; with the tongue 



294 THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH. 

we make other distinctions ; with, the hand yet other, 
and with these simple furnishings the soul is made ac- 
quainted with the existence and qualities of the ma- 
terial universe. 

A little child is an animal, first of all. First that 
which is natural ; then that which is spiritual. We 
first begin with the body. We know that there can be 
no sound mind except it is lodged in a sound body. 
There must be the full complement of senses, or a soul 
goes lame, as it were, all through life. So we build up 
a body and we educate the senses to make fine dis- 
criminations. We Jive materially, and we surround 
ourselves with more and more comforts. This life of 
the senses at times has been despised. The early Chris- 
tians despised it. The world was an alien place. We 
tented in it ; we were strangers — pilgrims of the night. 
The songs of old are songs of pilgrimage. " Brief life 
is here our portion." They hated it ; it was evil ; its 
touch was contamination ; its breath was the breath of 
a pestilence. In later times our thought has changed. 
This is a good world to live in. It is a place of disci- 
pline ; it is a place for the education of the soul. We 
make straight its paths and smooth its roads. It is a 
safer place to be in than ever before. We love it more, 
because we see its spiritual uses more. So we do not 
despise it, for we know its place. But when it is over- 
valued, then it has lost its place and use. Then it 
throttles the soul, instead of helping it ; checks it, in- 
stead of speeding it. 

Said the old philosophy, "Let us eat and drink, for to- 
morrow we die." I pity those who see nothing beyond ; 
who have no vision ; who do not interpret to their 
consciousness the hints and suggestions which their 
imagination is giving to them. I wish they could take 
cognizance of the fine impressions the spiritual world 
is making upon them, which should tell them that life 



THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH. 295 

is something more than mere animal existence. Is it 
not true of ns all that, when we have gone to the limit 
of our knowledge we feel that there is something be- 
yoncl? We must feel it, the dissatisfaction of the 
senses, the awful shadow of change, love beaten back 
as it goes following that which it loved until lost to 
sight. When we have developed our senses until we 
know the whole round, beautiful universe, still we shall 
be left with questioning mind and outstretched hands. 

So it is that we press up more and more against the 
barriers. Not only in our own experience, but in the 
history of the world, there has been another order of 
fact and truth coming into use, which reports itself to 
the higher intellectual faculty. That which the senses 
can not grasp the intellect penetrates. That which we 
have exhausted in our feeling comes now to satisfy 
something of our craving for knowledge. We have a 
desire to know, as well as to feel and enjoy. We desire 
not only to bask in the beautiful sunshine, but to know 
what the sun is. And the mind goes out into the 
mysteries of the universe, and uncovers God's secrets, 
and traces out and estimates the working of his laws, 
and grows yet more to the measure of the stature of 
an intellectual nature. This is the second stage in the 
development of a soul. This is the second chapter in 
the natural history of its development from sense to 
intellect. We learn to know the quality of truth in 
things and to enjoy the beauty that is in them. 

All art, as well as all scientific knowledge, comes to 
the intellect. From sense we project ourselves into 
that which lies beyond sense, and in science we put in 
order the laws of God. We estimate the value of the 
facts of life, and so we become acquainted with the 
world. We search it out, and we grow to the measure 
of it. Great artists and great musicians are men that 
have reached up into God's mysteries and come back 



296 THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH. 

with information. We can not have a good intellect 
without a good sense education. We must have the 
furnishing and equipment of intellectual faculty, and 
its education, in order properly to enter God's work. 

There are beauties that no painter has ever yet been 
able to put upon his canvas ; there is a light on sea and 
land, of which he gets glimpses but can make no report ; 
there are laws which only show themselves in fitful 
suggestions which we can not understand. As one has 
made a step out into this region, he becomes conscious 
of wider vistas of possibilities of things to know and to 
realize. Great thinkers have been lonely men. There 
stands in the quadrangle at Cambridge, England, the 
marble statue of Sir Isaac Newton; and Wordsworth 
uses these words : " The marble image of a mind for- 
ever voyaging out over strange seas of thought alone." 
What a picture that is of an intellect wonderfully 
equipped, but still voyaging out and voyaging alone. 
Michael Angelo was a lonely man. There was no one 
who shared his thought or vision. Great intellects are 
lonely and isolated. They are not satisfied. They see 
and hear things that others do not see ; it is their re- 
ports which are continually leading us on by telling us 
that life is more than we can see. 

The soul becomes conscious of a world outlying that 
in which the mere reasoning faculty holds sway. We 
call it the spiritual world. That is only a name in 
itself, and means nothing, for the word spirit is only 
the word breath. But we mean it is something we 
can not touch or handle, and can not weigh or estimate ; 
that it reports itself to us in such ways that only the 
most delicate consciousness can register the impression 
that it makes. It is to be known by its results rather 
than by any information which can be registered of it. 
No man can tell what he sees ; he can only try to live 
that which he discovers. To discover in this world the 



THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH. 297 

facts of the universe, the scientific man employs not his 
microscope, his telescope, or his spectroscope, but his 
imagination. More than any of the tools or instru- 
ments that were in his laboratory, Michael Faraday 
used his imagination. By means of these coarse tools 
he was able to get up to a certain point ; and then he 
must project his imagination, that is, his faith must go 
out to discover. Into this the prophet has gone and 
discovered God's ideal righteousness and man's ideal 
society. 

Love always sees so much in a face that is not there, 
we think; but love sees what is there that we can not 
see, for love is faith's guiding light and sees there the 
possibilities of the beautiful soul that God made. You 
«an not see in your neighbor's little children the beauty 
that that mother sees and that father sees ; but it is 
there. It is due to your lack of perception that you do 
not see it. The power of the Christ was that he saw 
in every child the beauty of the soul which you and I 
only see in our own little children. So faith leads love 
out into this spiritual world, and here the singer finds 
the chords and harmony ; the painter finds the perfec- 
tions of form and color ; and the spiritual mind finds 
the truths of God. 

E"ow, the faculty by which we explore it is faith or 
imagination. Call it what you will, it does not matter ; 
it is the same thing; imagination, when we use it in 
the lower forms of life; faith, if you please, when we 
use it on higher ranges.- But it is that power or faculty 
by which we explore the unseen world. 

The reports of faith are subject to the changes which 
all other reports are subject to. By the mouth of two 
or three witnesses, everything shall be established. 
One man's report must be confirmed by that of another 
man and the consensus of opinion must be had before a 
thing is established. A thing may be true to me, and I 



298 THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH. 

may not be able to make it true to you. There is a 
personal bias, it may be, on account of which I can 
not justly estimate what I see. But here comes life to 
test it. There is not a single thing which faith reveals 
that may not be, and is not meant to be, proved by life. 
With that which can not be tested and proved we have 
nothing to do. We may well wait for generations un- 
born to discover that to their fellows. We can test and 
prove everything that faith reveals to us. Singular, 
too, this is ; but it explains to us why so many reve- 
lations of the past have not been true. They were 
above the reporters of truth. The windows through 
which they looked were dim, like windows of horn. A 
form was there, a presence, a moving shape, but what 
it was one could not tell. So faith rectifies itself by 
obedience. What we see there, we must use here ; and 
what we can not use here can not be true there for us. 

The rectification of faith explains to us the changes 
which the history of every faith has undergone. Super- 
stitions are more than truths, that is, they are truths 
seen like the shadow on the Brocken, when a man 
walks in the Black Forest. At times the light is pro- 
jected on the mountain and an awful giant is seen there,, 
which, at one time, filled with fear the minds of those 
that saw it. The shadow of the Brocken is but the 
projection of one's self, and these fears and supersti- 
tions are but shadows which have been cast, as faith 
has been trying to report what it saw. The falsity of 
it consists in the fact that these shadows, once seen to 
be shadows, are still insisted upon as being truths. 
But faith in its development leaves behind it one thing 
after another, as bringing things to the test of life, it 
finds them either untrue or with only an element of 
truth in them. 

The discoveries which are made by faith in the spir- 
itual world are the disturbing elements in society. 



THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH. 299 

"Beware," said Emerson, "when God lets loose a 
thinker in this world." Beware, oh, men, that want 
things always as they are, of the power of a thinker. 
We are continually bringing every thought to the test 

of life. It is the faculty which is to be used as the eye, 
the ear and the hand are used. Its reports are to be 
interrogated, weighed, discriminated, compared with 
others before the conclusions are to become our utmost 
and ultimate law. What I see to be right I must live 
up to, come weal, come woe. The consequences must 
have nothing to do with it. Simply, is it true to me. 
I must use my judgment; I must compare it with the 
reports of others ; I must be patient before I publish it 
to the world; I must not insist that my neighbor shall 
take it as right. The revelation is to me God's ulti- 
mate law for the moment, and I must live to the level 
of it, or pay the penalty of a lost soul. For one can 
not play fast and loose with this faculty. You may, if 
you please, go out and say twice two are five, or twice 
two are three — the consequences will be upon your 
head. You may, if you please, say there is no law of 
gravitation and walk off this platform — certain con- 
sequences follow. You can not disregard the revela- 
tions of your faith any more than you can these. You 
lose the power of discrimination, the sense of life, and 
by and by you are left stranded, a lost soul. A lost 
soul is in God's universe a man or woman who has no 
faith, who does not believe in truth and honesty, and 
in the things which the good hold dear. Other things 
change. These convictions do not change. 

How singular it is that the primitive mind penetrates 
to the heart of these things. God does not wait for 
great intellects and great natures to find them out. 
Simple peasants on the plains of Mesopotamia dis- 
covered God's laws of righteousness. Man in Greece 
discovered God's laws of beauty, as man in Egypt first 



300 THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH. 

laid the foundations of science, and as man in Rome 
first laid the foundations of civil government. Certain 
principles are always the same, as there are thirty-six 
inches to the yard in Nova Zembla or in the markets 
of London. Opinions change, our bodies change, but 
principles do not change. The revelation is that 
there is a power, a presence, that shapes us at its will 
to forms of beauty. This is an undying conviction of 
man. 

Faith tells us that God is a rewarder of those that 
diligently seek him; that the farmer shall eat of his 
harvest; that we shall enjoy the fruit of that of which 
we plant the seed. Grod is just and a rewarder of those 
that do right. This is another undeviating conviction. 
Faith makes us conscious of life in its amplitude and 
powers of expansion. Faith makes us know life is 
something more than what we eat and drink ; and the 
more we obey the more we know of the life that is be- 
yond. I pity any one who lives in this mysterious 
world, and who yet thinks life is nothing more than 
that of the beast that perishes. But I can believe 
that such, at some time, will come to self-consciousness, 
when the delicate play of color and the delicate hint of 
the spirit's revelation shall make them say, of how 
much more value am I than the beasts that perish. 

This is faith, and this is the life of faith — living to 
the level of the best we know, and the truest we hear 
and see. This is the obedience of the spirit which en- 
larges the capacity. This is the natural history of the 
soul as it passes from stage to stage, until it stands in 
spiritual presence. We see and we hear more than we 
can report. Each heart keeps the secret of its own 
revelation ; and seeing and knowing, we grow to the 
measure of the stature of the fullness of him who sees 
and hears and knows things as they are. 



THINGS THAT ARE COMMON. 



THINGS THAT ARE COMMON. 

"What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common." 
Acts x, 15. 

^pHE book of Acts is a history of the fortunes of 
■ivy the Christian faith as it went out into the world. 
r ^v It tells of the broadening of mind and deepening 
of thought that came to those into whose hands it was 
committed. It would hardly be expected that men, 
brought up in the lower walks of life, with the absence 
of intellectual knowledge, and the lack of spiritual per- 
ceptions, which characterized the disciples of Jesus, 
should penetrate easily to the heart of his doctrine, or 
know the scope and range of it. 

The disciples had no conception of Jesus' ministry, 
and thought that the new religion was only a phase of 
Jewish faith. It was protected by the Jewish state ; it 
came under the shelter of the Jewish religion. They 
went to the temple as of old they had done; still they 
shared their old-time prejudices, national and social. 
At that time it was not right to eat with one outside of 
their household of faith. Their food and their customs 
had been erected into a religion. No more than half 
-a mile might be traveled on the Sabbath day ; no leav- 
ened bread might be eaten ; no food cooked ; and no 
service might be done on that day. Their ordinary 
ceremony was to them religion largely. They had be- 
come prejudiced toward outside people as the Greeks 



304 THINGS THAT ARE COMMON. 

were toward all that did not share in their culture^ 
Those were barbarians in relation to the Greeks. All 
others were Gentiles in their relation to the Jews. These 
national and social prejudices were taught and fostered 
by long years of proud brooding over their past and 
in proud hope of their future. To them every one who 
came in contact with the new thought at all must come 
as a Jew, or as a proselyte ; must take upon himself the 
forms and ceremonies of that religion. All were com- 
mon and unclean who lay outside of their region of 
thought and faith. 

Therefore it came as a revelation to this man, brood- 
ing and dreaming in vision upon the house-top, when 
out of heaven came down the great sheet, knitted at its 
four corners, in which were all manner of living things. 
He heard the voice say, "Rise, Peter, kill and eat." 
" Not so," he says ; " I have never at any time eaten 
anything common or unclean." Then came the answer r 
"What God hath cleansed, that call not thou com- 
mon." What does this mean ? Knocking at the gate 
are three men who bring a message from a man who is 
common and unclean — a Gentile, not a Jew — a man 
who still worships, or at least keeps in his house, the 
old household idols, but who is now groping along the 
path of right and truth, trying to find out what God 
will have him do. He asks for help ; for direction. 

And now this apostle is to have it revealed to him 
that this gospel which he has supposed was for himself 
and his people, is for all the world. He is bidden to go 
down and follow the messengers and do whatsoever 
shall be revealed to him to do. 

In obedience to this direction, he goes to this Roman, 
unclean because of his position in the Roman army, un- 
clean because of his relation to the Roman world. He 
is taught there that God is no respecter of persons ; 



THINGS THAT ARE COMMON. 305 

has no partiality; shows no favors. What he hath 
cleansed, no man may henceforth call common or un- 
clean. 

Nothing is obscure or common, when the thought of 
God is incarnated in it and the love of God rests upon 
it. The hope of God beautifies it. From this thought 
I take my subject : " Things That Are Common." 

There are many phases of our Christian thought and 
hope; and the glance that is kindliest, perhaps, is that 
which it casts upon common things. It looks upon 
them in the light which is reflected from the face ot 
Christ and that comes from the knowledge of the true 
God. It has a kindly sympathetic interest in everything 
that God has made; in the flowers, in the trees, in the 
birds, and, best, in man. God has somehow made his 
dwelling place in those forms ; fashioned them after his 
own thought of beauty and use; cleansed them from 
impurities and set them to their use. 

Jesus Christ had a kindly, sympathetic interest in 
everything. Nothing was too small for his notice ; 
nothing too common for his remark ; nothing too 
broken for his pity; nothing too deeply sunk for his 
search ; and nothing too distant for his love and longing. 
Who but he could pass by the splendor of the court 
and the majesty of a throne and show us that our ideas 
of God were best found in the circle of the commonest 
home there was in Judea, or the simplest home there is 
in Indianapolis ? Who before him had told the world 
that you can get the best idea of God from simple home 
life ? Who but he ever thought of setting before us a 
little child and saying, " Learn of him to be meek and 
simple of heart or you can not enter into the kingdom 
of heaven?" Who but he ever thought it of sufficient 
importance to note the birds that fly, and the flowers 
that bloom; to say, "here you shall find your lesson 
of trust in God — of confidence in his providing love and 

20 



306 THINGS THAT ARE COMMON. 

over-watching care?" Who but he ever thought 
enough of the sports of children — their mimic funeral 
and their mimic marriage, to find there a lesson ? Who 
but he saw the varied play of human activity and found 
there his deepest and richest conceptions and experi- 
ences of God's thought ? 

It was the gospel of little things that he taught; that 
nothing was unnoticed and disregarded ; that the hairs 
of your head are all numbered ; that the sparrows do 
not light upon the ground without his knowledge ; that 
the cries of little children and the cries of hungry 
beasts are all heard and provided for in the economy of 
God. 

What observation he had ! He saw his mother mend 
the old clothes with the new patch, and saw it tear 
away. Out of this he made the parable. He who had 
watched and felt the pathetic economies of their home, 
and seen the consternation of loss which came when 
the leathern bottles burst from the force of the new 
wine, afterward made from it that beautiful parable 
that we can not put new thoughts into old forms. 
Thus our Christian religion and our Christ get their 
deepest meanings from little common things. 

This regard for little things, this feeling that nothing 
is common that God has made, nothing disregarded that 
he has set in its place, is seen also in the relation of 
Christ to persons as well as to things. There are no 
common or unclean persons to him who looks at them 
in the light of the thought of Christ. 

How often the disfigurements upon a face may be 
lines of beauty to one who knows through what pain, 
struggle and suffering that one has come. The form 
that is bowed is not the homeliest thing; the hand 
that is hard is not therefore awkward, and the foot that 
presses oftenest the dusty way of life is not therefore a 
common foot. 



THINGS THAT ARE COMMON. 307 

They were the disregarded men and women, scorned, 
held in indifference, and forsaken, that Jesus drew to 
him. To them he told his stories; to them gave his 
words of hope; from them he drew his lessons of 
happy life. And what stories he told them of common 
things ! 

There was the persistent search of the shepherd for 
one lost sheep, though there were ninety and nine yet 
in the fold; there was the search after the penny that 
was lost though there were others in the purse ; there 
was the love and longing for the lost son though an- 
other was left at home. 

And so our gospel in its real essence and meaning is a 
gospel of common things, for common men and women. 
It tells us that there are none common and there is 
nothing unclean. All alike stand before God. He is 
no respecter of persons, has no partialities and shows 
no favors. As he lets his sun kiss all alike, so he lets 
his spirit breathe into every spirit and his love cradle 
and soothe every troubled heart. 

It is this thought of Jesus Christ which has always 
given to the people their belief in Christianity. What- 
ever stern face it has presented in this school or that, 
whatever cruel or untrue word has been uttered in its 
name, people have forgotten, have never regarded or 
have protested against. But they have never been able 
to lose sight of that winning power which the Chris- 
tian faith has for them ; because it has taken up the 
little things of their common lives into its regard. 

"I am poor and needy," says one, "but the Lord 
thinketh upon me." "I have been young, now I am 
old, but I have never seen the righteous forsaken nor his 
seed begging bread." " I was poor and low and he 
helped me." 

It is this identification of the great with the little, 
that has made Christianity such a part of our whole 



308 THINGS THAT ARE COMMON. 

structure. ISTo one is able to escape from it ; and no one, 
though he turn his back upon it, but finds its echo in 
his heart. For one's own sympathy and pity for the 
suffering about him tells that Christ has found his 
home in his heart. 

And this valuation is being emphasized by science. 
Go where we will, following the lead of scientific 
thought, we see that in the infinitely little, God has 
lodged infinitely great power. The very weed we tread 
on, which seems to us so noisome, may contain the 
balm of life for us in some great agony. On the stone 
we kick from before us, because it obstructs our way, 
we may read the history of creation in the pictured 
fern. In the imbedded shell, the thoughtful man sees 
proof of the passage of God up the centuries. The 
birds of the air bring us their message. Old floating 
songs, customs, proverbs, have their place. There is 
nothing common, nothing unclean — no little thing but 
has its part and place. Nothing but what is sacred and 
a v witness to the power and presence of God. The 
flowers tell of his providence and his thought of 
beaut} 7 ; and the birds tell of his providing love. 

Old songs have their meanings. They mark the 
progress of -thought up the ages. Old customs and 
proverbs are but the forgotten forms of things once 
useful — disused forms of things that were once helpful 
to man ; and they, too, are neither common nor un- 
clean. 

How much of the happiness of our lives depends on 
little things. I have turned over a volume of poems 
written by humble poets, whose, voices spring from the 
heart, verses gathered from newspapers — scattered 
gems. As I read this volume made up of humble 
poems I get again the thought of the gospel of common 
things ; for as I turn over these poems, I see how close 
they touch my heart and soul and must touch others. 



THINGS THAT ARE COMMON. 309 

These humble poems explain to us why, with all the 
splendor and majesty of Milton's verse, we would rather 
hear Burns' song of the daisy; and with all the depth 
and terror of Dante, we would rather hear a poem of 
Longfellow. This is because life is common, the same 
hopes brighten our lives, the same burdens depress 
them, the same temptations will meet us to-morrow, 
the same shame covers our faces, the same sorrow 
touches our hearts, and the same joys light our path- 
way. 

Experiences are common; nothing comes to one that 
has not come to another. The common things are 
around all : the sky above, the green grass below, the 
air we breathe, friendship knitting heart to heart, 
sympathy out-reaching from one to another, comfort 
wherewith one who has been comforted of God com- 
forts those who are in sorrow, a common lapse and 
fall, a common sin and a common salvation. 

Here lies the secret Of a happy life — not in possess- 
ing some picture which I alone can see, but something 
that ten thousand eyes will be glad to look at ; not some 
statue in a room where I alone can go or with a friend 
to see it, but something in the center of the market- 
place where all may see and all may be proud to see, 
and which shall be a silent educating power whose in- 
fluence sinks down into the heart until it responds to 
the glory that is in the statue. 

The orator moves us not by his eloquence, but by the 
story he tells of common lives. I can tell you stories 
of little children which you would be gladder to hear 
than though I recited to you a great poem. 

It is the common things that contribute most to our 
comfort and happiness. That the air should not blow 
from the northeast, but should come warm and gentle ; 
that we should have a good sleep and no troubled dream ; 



310 THINGS THAT ARE COMMON. 

that it should be well Avith father, mother and the chil- 
dren, as they meet together ; that none shall be angry or 
out of humor or troubled in the morning, these are 
the little things that make life glad. When a little 
child is sick and taken from the family circle, isolated 
in a room, then all at once we feel how much is gone. 
What an unrest comes to us. We can not study or read 
the accustomed book. The light somehow has gone 
because the order of our lives is broken up. How 
empty the house seems when the wife is gone out of it 
for a time. How the small comforts go unprovided. 
What dust gathers on everything and into what con- 
fusion things come when that ever-watchful eye and 
ever-ready hand are absent. Out of Yorkshire comes 
an old saying, "There's na' pleasure i' the house, when 
the gude mon's awa'." 

Thus to our common experience this gospel applies ; 
to our hopes its promises come, to our sorrows comes 
its comfort, to our sin comes its call " Come unto me, 
all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give 
you rest." Why is there such sweetness in those 
words, because we know what weariness and burdens 
are, and the needs for rest. 

If any one is ever going to' do any good in life, it will 
be by taking advantage of these common opportunities. 
Many a one has wished he could have a nature like 
Bayard's, " without fear and without reproach ;" — might 
go on Crusades and rescue the tomb of Christ from the 
infidel ; might be called to the martyr's stake or mar- 
tyr's cross. But, no. For one such life as that, there 
are millions of those who must be content to find their 
consolation if they find it at all in the little ways of 
life, in the little acts of kindness, in the words of com- 
fort, in the greetings and exchange of courtesies. 
Here we find our pleasure and our life. 



THINGS THAT ARE COMMON. 311 



O >> 



The Psalmist asks : " Who shall ascend into heaven ? 
that is, bring the Christ down from heaven; "Who 
shall descend into the deep?" that is, bring the Christ 
up from below. What does this mean ? The world is 
here, the opportunities for living are here. We must 
take up the cause of the oppressed to-day ; go out in the 
name and spirit of Christ now. Here, if anywhere, in 
these humble things, so often despised, so often down- 
trodden and thrust rudely aside, lies the hope of our life. 
It is in the greeting of friends, in the word spoken, or 
the little act of kindness. Here we find that in e these 
common and so often disregarded and perhaps despised 
opportunities lies the great secret of a happy and suc- 
cessful life. 

Every day, I suppose, some brakeman or some en- 
gineer is killed or wounded. It is not a common thing. 
Those are not common messages that come over the 
wire. What messages there are of home and hap- 
piness, of sorrow and misery, of shame and disgrace ! 

Out of common things is woven this daily life which 
has mingled in its gladness strange dark threads of 
sorrow. It is not common. Nothing is common for 
God has cleansed it. 

" The common people heard him gladly," it was said 
of Jesus. His words were full of gladness and real- 
ity. Cornelius, the centurion, is not common now 
though a Roman, and it may be even a Pagan. God 
hath cleansed him. His own aspiration and endeavor 
to lead the higher life have made him not common and 
not unclean. 

This doctrine that everything is cleansed and worthy 
was a strong blow struck at social caste. Every throne 
there was in the world shook at that time. All social 
prejudices trembled, they knew not why, when from 
the lips of the new faith there sounded out like a 
trumpet note : " God does not respect persons or 



312 THINGS THAT ARE COMMON. 

places ; God has no favorites ; God is not partial ; but 
in every nation and in every condition, he that doeth 
righteousness is accepted of him." Hear it ring 
through the centuries; hear it ring through Europe 
and America. It says to every one : " God is no re- 
specter of persons ; he looks at the heart, the intent, the 
will, and the disposition of the spirit." That announce- 
ment shook all countries and conditions. All social 
prejudices melted before that thought, as when the 
warm south wind blows across the snow drift. All 
caste disappeared. The down-trodden of the world 
everywhere heard it and lifted up their faces and said : 
" I too, then, am thought of by God." 

Thus there takes the place of the old exclusiveness 
in religion, this broad and universal invitation to every 
one to come to the feast of life ; come as you can ; come 
lame ; come halting in the way ; come creeping if you 
will ; come and take of the offer of life freely — the com- 
mon blessing of God. 

Common men? There are no common men. Low 
men ? There are none low. Every one in his place ; 
every one in his time ; every one in his thought — God 
has placed him there and he is working out his prob- 
lem of civilization through him. Let none look down 
upon this occupation or that, and say it is common or 
unclean. The very usefulness of it is its sacredness 
and cleansing. All occupations take an equal stand 
before God. I would not take to myself any privilege 
or pleasure to which the poorest, meanest man is not 
as much entitled. 

If it were given to me to-day to know that I should 
be the one of a thousand, or the one of a hundred, or 
one of twenty, who alone should enter the gate of the 
heavenly city, I would take my chances with those who 
are left behind, rather than with the few that should 



THINGS THAT ARE COMMON. 313 

enter ; I would join the common people — the vast ma- 
jority. 

Sorrow is common enough, God knows. Grief is 
common, so is kindly sympathy and the same common 
fatherly love and the same common supper of the 
brotherhood. 

IT IS COMMON. 

" So are the stars and the arching skies, 
So are the smiles in the children's eyes. 
Common, the life-giving breath of the spring : 
So are the songs which the wild birds sing. 
Blessed be God, they are common ! 

" Common the grass in its growing green ; 
So is the water's glistening sheen. 
Common the springs of love and mirth ; 
So are the holiest gifts of earth. 

"Common the fragrance of rosy June : 
So is the generous harvest moon, 
So are the towering, mighty hills, 
So are the twittering, trickling rills. 

' Common the beautiful tints of the fall : 
So is the sun which is over all. 
Common the rain with its pattering feet : 
So is the bread which we daily eat. 

Blessed be God, it is common ! 

'So is the sea in its wild unrest, 
Kissing forever the earth's brown breast ; 
So is the voice of undying prayer, 
Evermore piercing the ambient air. 

1 ' Common to all are the ' promises ' given ; 
Common to all is the hope of heaven ; 
Common is rest from the weary strife ; 
Common the life that is after life : 

Blessed be God, all are common ! ' ' 



THE PERFECT LAW OF LIBERTY 



THE PERFECT LAW OF LIBERTY. 



Whoso looketh into the perfeet law of liberty, and continueth therein, 
he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall 
be blessed in his deed. 

James i, 2b. 



Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all 
thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind ; and thy 
neighbor as thyself. 

Luke x, 27. 

fIBERTY means freedom from restraint; law 
means the imposition of restraint. The law of 
liberty seems a paradox. Law and liberty. How 
shall they be connected together ? How shall law be- 
come liberty, and how shall liberty find itself within 
law? These two things have seemingly been opposed 
to each other through all history. Under various 
names and forms, they have been thought by man to 
be antagonistic. A boy looks for freedom from the re- 
straints of the home. A man hopes for the time when 
he shall have a sense of freedom from care and respon- 
sibilities of business. There is a certain delight in sum- 
mer in being in the woods, when the conventions of 
society fall off, and the thousand little limitations upon 
liberty are felt no more. In government there is the 
longing for liberty and free, pliable institutions. In 
religion there is a longing for freedom from the severer 



318 THE PERFECT LAW OF LIBERTY. 

creeds and impositions of councils. So there is tins 
desire for more freedom of action, this impatience of 
the limitations and restraints which religion, govern- 
ment, society, and conscience put upon us. 

But no one can he free. There is no place where law 
is not in some form. The littlest child soon learns how 
much of command there is in the household, and yet 
later how much there is in society and in nature. So 
there is a continual struggle in a man's life with the 
things that seem to restrain his liberty and constrain 
his free action. Fate and free will are but statements 
of this same thing. The sovereignty of God which, 
in the old theology, was thought to limit every free 
thought and action of man, has been protested against 
in the interests of the free spirit; and the insistence of 
the free, active will has been asserted. So turn where 
we will, we find these seemingly antagonistic thoughts 
— freedom on the one hand and restraint on the other. 
And, therefore, again I say, there seems to us an in- 
congruity in the use of the words, the perfect law of 
liberty. ISTo geometer has yet been able to span with 
his thought these two great polarities of fate and free 
will, of what Emerson calls power and circumstance. 
We assert our freedom, the force that is within us ex- 
pands, presses up against all limitations, and then we 
say, I, me and mine. Then, all at once, we become 
conscious within how limited a sphere we can move. 

Life is a necessity and the one great word is submis- 
sion. The Greek, early in the history of human 
thought, taught that life is not simply choice and will, 
but an irreversible, unchangeable destiny. We continu- 
ally struggle between the consciousness of power and 
the recognition of necessity; between the freedom of 
the spirit and the impositions and restraints which 
something, some power, some circumstance lays upon 
us. What shall we say, then, of liberty and restraint, 



THE PERFECT LAW OF LIBERTY. 319 

of freedom and limitation, of fate and free will, of self 
and other? It is not strange that something which is 
so imperious and important as the human soul, should 
find its limitations and its laws. Just how far we can 
do as we please no one has yet found out. That we 
can not do as we please, the experience of each of us 
will confirm. Happy he who can find and know the 
perfect law of liberty. 

When a human soul is flung out from God into this 
world the first consciousness is that of self; the first 
feeling is a feeling of freedom ; the first desire is a de- 
sire for liberty. This is the primal force that is enclosed 
within us. This is the primal consciousness — of freedom. 
This is the oldest desire — for liberty. The self-assertion, 
the assertion of one's own individuality — this is the 
force which impels a little child. But how soon a cer- 
tain control is exercised over it, certain restraints are 
felt, and limitations are imposed — limitations of phys- 
ical nature by which health comes ; of the laws of 
the moral universe upon which happiness is depend- 
ent ; of the laws of wealth upon which physical com- 
fort so largely rests ; of the laws of society and of 
government upon which good citizenship and order 
depend. 

These are the limitations that close around the 
growing life of a child, until he wonders where free- 
dom is. His life consists of trying to find out what 
he may do. I do not wonder that a little child 
grows impatient. Starting in life with this privi- 
lege, this magna charta, this inalienable right to lib- 
erty, this consciousness of power, this assertion of 
self, this desire for freedom, I do not wonder he should 
become impatient at the number of commands, the 
multitude of limitations, and the minute restraints that 
are laid upon him. He can not understand yet how 
complex a thing is life. £To more could a star endowed 



320 THE PERFECT LAW OF LIBERTY. 

with consciousness understand why. starting out on its 
free path, it must conform its motion to the presence 
of a million worlds. But a little child simply feels the 
restraint, the push and the action of something that 
says shall not and do not. A young man is impetuous 
and impatient. Why these limitations upon life ? Why 
are there so many things he must not do ? He can not 
understand that life is made up of laws by the fine 
balancing of forces. By the co-operant working of 
many laws comes ultimate peace. 

The trackless path of a star is possible, the punctual 
moment when it crosses the imaginary line is possible, 
only by its observance of many minute commands from 
unseen worlds. But there is not a star so remote in 
this universe but what it exercises its attracting, com- 
pelling power upon the movement of our sun and its 
satellites. All these things have to be taken into ac- 
count in this life. The things of home, the laws of 
society, the presence of other men and women and the 
future ages, all have to be taken into account. Mind 
can not grasp the number of things that must be con- 
sidered. 

How can a soul find its perfect law of liberty? It is 
this lesson which human beings young and old are so 
slow to learn, that makes of life a struggle, a conflict 
and a tragedy. Our ignorance makes of life a contin- 
ual struggle. The world for thousands of years has 
been beating itself against these facts of nature and 
conditions of social life and readjusting the few experi- 
ences that have become customs and laws. How long* 
did it take, do you think, to write the ten command- 
ments ? History is gray when the ten commandments 
first appear on the written page of Jewish history, be- 
fore a man has found out that there are ten things 
even, that he must not do that he would like to do. 
How long did it take, do you think, to write the body 



THE PERFECT LAW OF LIBERTY. 321 

of law that conies to us ? Ages and ages have come 
and we have this little result, an unsatisfactory result 
even yet. Our courts are here because men have not 
yet found out the limitations that it is necessary to put 
upon the individual life. 

I can remember a time when a man might pick 
apples from almost any tree, might hunt over any field, 
might fish from any stream. We create conditions 
that make crimes now. The complexities grow, and 
the criminals grow, because our consciousness of limi- 
tation and our sense of duty and our feeling of obedi- 
ence do not. keep pace with the complexity in the 
situation of life. It is harder to live than it used to be, 
in old, simple, primitive times, when Abraham tented 
up and down Palestine ; harder to be good than it was ; 
harder than it was for James or Peter or John to go 
to Jesus with their little questions. Each of us has to 
beat his own music out; each of us is scarred all over 
with the result of these conflicts in life. Life is a strug- 
gle between ourselves and these conditions ; and yet 
these conditions are not arbitrary or artificial. Every 
one of them stands rooted deep in the nature of things. 
Why ? Because one must observe the right of another 
to his liberty, and one must honor his father and mother 
and recognize the sanctity of human life. Therefore, 
it is we must submit. 

The older and wiser we become, the clearer we see 
these obligations which are imposed upon us by nature's 
laws and the laws of society, and the presence of other 
beings in this world. Little children, boys and girls, 
young men and women, it is not an easy thing to live. 
It is a hard thing to live until you get the clue, the 
simple principle ; and then it is hard to apply it. We 
have to find our guiding thought in the world. We 
have to recognize our limitations, that we can not do 

21 



322 THE PERFECT LAW OF LIBERTY. 

as we will ; and then ultimately to know that the 
freest man is he who obeys unconsciously most laws of 
nature and of God. 

Life has its struggles, its victories, its shame and its 
tragic element. What is the fall of man but the failure 
of man to recognize the necessary limitations upon his 
passion, his desire and his liberty ? Here is a man that 
has a great desire for property, a desire that surmounts 
all questions of prudence and questions of right, 
until by and by he ceases to recognize what is his and 
what is another's, and oversteps the bounds which law 
has put, and the man has failed, has fallen. The liberty 
he desired, the free range of passion and of desire, have 
brought him up against the limitations of the laws of 
property and of person, and he is a bruised man and a 
criminal. When shall we learn that life is a complex 
thing, that life is the minute adjustment of the power 
that is within us to the laws of health, of morals, of 
property, of politics and of society. Then shall we find 
the perfect law of liberty. This freedom of the indi- 
vidual we must assert ; this presence of something else 
we must affirm ; we must find some path which shall 
spare us the painful experience of having missed our 
way. When Shelley sounded his deep note of Prome- 
theus Unbound against the current theology of that 
day, when John Mill said, " I will never call that good 
in G-od which is not what I mean by that word good 
when I apply it to the actions of my fellow-men/' such 
men stood for the individual right. Such men full of 
the power and consciousness of individuality in the 
soul tried to say that each soul must find its own way 
to God. What a tragedy there was when Jesus Christ, 
coming with his free spirit up against the limitations 
of Jewish theology, broke them, and died, breaking 
them. What a tragedy there was when Arnold Winkel- 
ried, pressing against the serried phalanx out of which 



THE PERFECT LAW OF LIBERTY. 323 

Austrian spears bristled, threw himself against them, 
gathered them in his arms and made a way for the 
Swiss to pass through them. He broke the front and 
died in it. To break a way for liberty is tragic, as well 
as to die trying to conquer the restraints which ought 
to be put upon liberty. There are men who suffer de- 
feat and yet who are victorious. Mazzini, Garibaldi 
and Cavour — these men stood for liberty of the indi- 
vidual. Every heretic has stood for the freedom of the 
individual. 

God first makes us emphasize one thing, and then 
another. First, he says to us, You are free ; use your 
power. Then he says to us, You must submit, obey. 
Then he tells us, Cease obedience ; it is shameful to obey 
a wrong thing, and we assert our individuality again. 
Then again, we take on finer bonds of obligation, until 
at last, little by little, emphasizing freedom and empha- 
sizing obedience, we come more and more toward tak- 
ing the perfect way of liberty ; and we recognize, by 
looking within ourselves, that there are certain laws 
which it is a privilege always to obey ; and we recog- 
nize, looking out upon society, that there are man-made 
laws which a free spirit must never obey. 

Mr. Reed says there are farmers in Marion county 
who have framed and hanging up in their homes the 
receipt for a thousand dollar fine which they paid for 
helping off a fugitive slave. A man may transmit that 
consciousness of having been a criminal in the eyes of 
the law to his children as the proudest thing he could 
give them ; that he dared to stand up against an unjust 
law and was not afraid to take the consequences. 

We have then to-day this : there is no one law of 
life. Ten commandments may do for the Jews, but a 
hundred commandments do not answer the nineteenth 
century. We have to assert the sacred liberty of the 
individual first of all. A man must keep faith with 



324 THE PERFECT LAW OF LIBERTY. 

himself. The instincts and impulses that are implanted 
within us, these are the most ancient laws of the soul. 
I must he true to myself, whatever consequences come. 
That is the first and great commandment ; that is equiv- 
alent to worshipping God who has impressed his own 
individual nature upon us and has made us to scorn a 
lie and hate an unjust thing. 

And when we have affirmed the sacredness of our 
own individuality, when we have learned to trust our 
instincts and our impulses as heavenly attractions that 
draw us to the great center, God, then we have to do 
the next thing. This is harder yet, to affirm the sacred- 
ness and sanctity of every other individual's life in this 
universe. I can recognize my own right and the sa- 
credness of my own individuality. I can say. I will 
not do a mean thing or speak a false thing. I will main- 
tain my truth. But it is quite another thing to say 
that every other man in the world has an equal right 
with myself to life, liberty and the pursuit of happi- 
ness : and that it is my duty to adjust my life so that 
in no way shall his liberty and his inalienable right be 
infringed upon; to adjust my life so that if he is im- 
posed upon or oppressed I shall come to his rescue. 

Here is the fine balance, then, of life; how to adjust 
ourselves, first, to the great spritual instinct which God 
has implanted within us and be true to ourselves: aud 
then to adjust ourselves to the equally true and valid 
instinct and impulses of our fellow-men. I want to 
live mv life and so do you. I have cravings and desires 
as you have. Each one of us has them, but none of us 
seems to feel that the other has them in just that strong 
insistence that he has. I can not think that any one 
else feels just that longing for life, perhaps, that I do. 
I build my life, I lay my plans. I do my business, as if 
I were the only one in this world that was to enjoy life 
in its fullness: but the same power that endowed me 



THE PERFECT LAW OF LIBERTY. 325 

with this vast heritage and privilege of living a large 
life also endowed every other man, woman and child 
here with the same inalienable right. My liberty ceases 
where my neighbor's begins, and my self-assertion must 
stop where the self of another meets it. He has equal 
right to life, liberty, happiness and the beauty and 
bounty of the world. 

I wonder if you know how radical this thought is ? 
It is not only the solving of difficulties, but it is the 
very principle of revolution. The slave in the south 
suddenly says : Why, I, too, have a right to liberty and 
the pursuit of happiness. Is that wbat your Declara- 
tion of Independence means, that, I, here, a slave bought 
and sold, serving men for scant food and scantier cloth- 
ing, have an equal right with every other man ? Then, 
up, every man ! That is what it means. It means that 
there is revolution wherever there is the consciousness 
of this thought, and struggle and conflict and clash, until 
at last, by the perfect law of liberty, each soul has 
found its orbit, has adjusted itself to the presence of 
each other soul. If I allow to my neighbor an equal 
right with myself in this universe, I must then see to 
it that the clothing he wears and the food he eats, 
the house that shelters him, the wages he gets, the 
beauty he sees, the songs he hears, the books he reads — 
everything, is in his possible possession. I must see 
to it that no self-assertiveness of mine, no pride of 
position or pride of intellect, does anything to hinder 
him. 

This is the fine, the perfect law of liberty. This is 
the principle which is to lead us through life. " Thou 
shalt love the Lord thy Gk>d with all thy heart and soul 
and mind and strength, and thy neighbor as thyself." 
Upon these two commandments hang the law and the 
prophets. The perfect law of liberty, then, is to recog- 
nize the sacredness of our individuality, the validity of 



326 THE PERFECT LAW OF LIBERTY. 

our spiritual instincts and impulses, the right to freedom 
and happiness that belongs to each. It is to do more 
than that. It is to recognize that every other man 
and woman and child, however degraded and besotted, 
of whatever color, class or condition, has an equal right 
with ourselves; it is to adjust our life, then, by that 
golden rule which Jesus Christ announced : Do unto 
others as you would that they should do unto you. 
What a simple measure ; what a rule of action this is : 
to question a thousand times a day, how would I like 
another man to treat me if he had my place and had 
my power ! This is the perfect law of liberty. 



Let thy blessing rest upon us, that blessing of atten- 
tive hearing and of application of thought, until these 
truths of thine, so simple that we only need to state 
them, so universal that there is not a star so far or a 
moss so fine, but what it obeys, shall become operative 
in our social life. Then will all disorder and clamor 
cease. Then we shall have peace, the peace which 
passeth understanding, God's peace, when every part 
in his infinite universe knows its place and does its 
work, interfering with nothing, living to the full its 
largest possibility of life. Amen. 



BOYS ARE SCARCER THAN DOLLARS. 



"Is it so far from thee, thou canst no longer see 
In the chamber over the gate that old man desolate, 
Weeping and wailing sore, for his son who is no more ? 
O Absalom, my son ! 

"Is it so long ago, that cry of human woe 
From the walled city came, calling on his dear name, 
That it has died away in the distance of to-day ! 
O Absalom, my son ! 

"There is no far nor near, there is neither there nor here, 
There is neither soon nor late in the chamber over the gate, 
Nor any long ago to the cry of human woe. 
O Absalom, my son ! 

"From the ages that are past the voice sounds like a blast, 
Somewhere at every hour, the watchmen on the tower 
Looks forth and sees the fleet approach of hurrying feet 
Of messengers that bear the tidings of despair. 
O Absalom, my sod ! 

"He goes forth from the door ; he shall return no more ; 
With him our joy departs, the light goes from our hearts, 
In the chamber over the gate we sit disconsolate. 
O Absalom, my son ! 

" That 'tis a common grief bringeth but slight relief; 
Ours is the bitt'rest loss, ours is the heaviest cross. 
And forever the cry will be, ' Would God I had died for thee,' 
O Absalom, my son !" 



BOYS ARE SCARCER THAJS T DOLLARS. 



" And the king went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept: 
and as he went, thus he said, ' ' my son Absalom, my son, my son 
Absalom ! would God I had died for thee, Absalom, my son, my 
son r ' 

II Samuel, xviii, 33. 

i^% WEEK ago Saturday evening a friend and I 
k^J/ were at the theater listening to the play, " A 
^° Gold Mine." Those of you who were there, as I 
trust many were, will remember the incident. This 
man had come from Grass Valley, Cal., with a gold 
mine which he is just on the point of selling, when he 
finds a young boy there in grave financial trouble. He 
had lost ten thousand pounds through speculations 
which his own father had set up, all unknowing that he 
had spread a net for the feet of his own son. Coming to 
the knowledge of this, the man from California ques- 
tions in his mind as to whether he shall give this 
money for which he is about to sell the mine to the res- 
cue of the boy. It will leave him poor, but says he, 
" Boys are scarcer than dollars. Boys are scarcer than 
dollars." He tells the story of his own brother, a 
young boy whose head had become confused, whose 
feet were swept from underneath him by the fierce 
speculation of Wall street ; and who in despair put a 
bullet in his head and his life had gone out. " I got 
there," said this man, "twenty-four hours after. I 
would have given my whole fortune to have saved him if 



330 BOYS ARE SCARCER THAN DOLLARS. 

he had only told me of it. You remind me of him, and I 
will help you. Boys are scarcer than dollars." Let us 
repeat it, until the pathos of it and truth of it shall get 
a little lodgment in our hearts — Boys are scarcer than 
dollars. 

As my friend and I went home that night, we talked 
together of a man I had known in times past, a busi- 
ness man, successful beyond the expectation of most 
men. I do not know that in his business history 
there was one single page of dishonor. I do not 
know that he ever did anything that the business world 
w^ould not permit ; but I do know this, that his life had 
been engrossed in his business to the exclusion of that 
careful attention to his family which it would seem they 
needed. The fierce, electric force of a passion for 
wealth's sake had consumed him. He was away from 
home much. To his already large business he kept ad- 
ding new business. At no time could one go to him but 
this passion for more, this cry for wealth, seemed to be 
continually ringing its changes in his ears, and eating 
like a consuming force at his heart. His family could 
not have known much of him. I do not question he 
made adequate provision for all their physical wants. 
I never heard they lacked anything except a father's 
presence and a father's kindness and thought. As the 
years went on and he became more and more wealthy 
and more and more engrossed, gradually his son disap- 
peared from him. He lost his boy ; lost him to honor 
and truth, virtue, temperance and self-respect — lost him ; 
I do not know whether absolutely so, but at any rate 
to-day he wanders through the far west somewhere, lost 
to his family. 

And now I want to know what is the profit to a man 
if he shall gain the whole world and lose his boy ? To 
this man dollars were scarcer than boys. He may have 
had a million of them — I do not know — but he still 



BOYS ARE SCARCER THAN DOLLARS. 331 

felt that dollars were scarcer than boys, and although 
he was unconscious of it, probably the passion for 
wealth had so penetrated him that, when he weighed 
in the one hand a dollar, and in the other hand his boy, 
it was always the dollar that was worth more than the 
boy. And now a^ain I say, varying the old word, 
what shall it profit a man if he shall gain a million 
and lose a boy ? Boys — again I say it — boys are scarcer 
than dollars. 

Consider this story of David and Absalom, see how 
closely it touches. Here was a king who had sat upon 
a throne, but who had lost a boy. I do not know how 
much of it was his fault. The story is silent about 
that. I can not tell how much of neglect there was. 
Fierce is the light that beats about a throne, and iso- 
lated and lonely the life of the children of the great, 
debarred the touch of human sympathy and the kind- 
liness of parental love ; but however it may be, it was 
true of that king's son, as of almost every king's son 
that has ever breathed the air, it was a lost life ; and 
he moans over it in the words you have heard. It is 
but the same refrain that you have heard already, for 
the words, " O, Absalom, my son, my son," are but the 
same in thought as this word, the long moan of a man 
for his boy, as too late, he finds out that boys are 
scarcer than dollars. 

Let us enlarge the word and say, boys and girls are 
scarcer than dollars — worth more. That is the simple, 
Saxon, forceful putting of a fact which we must always 
keep in our minds. The answer of political econ- 
omy to this proposition is that boys and girls, to say 
the least, are equal in value to dollars. Political econ- 
omy will not allow that a boy or girl is worth more 
than a dollar. For, if it felt so, it would never engage 
in child labor, it would never neglect the children and 



332 BOYS ARE SCARCER THAN DOLLARS. 

leave them to the street, the saloon, the prison, the re- 
form school. The very existence of the labor of children 
in factories, the presence of little children on the street, 
the bringing of children np in the courts, their pres- 
ence in the reform school, is the answer of the spirit of 
the age which says a child is not better than a dollar — 
says let ns alone, let us gather our dollars and let our 
boys and girls take care of themselves. And the spirit 
of competitive industry and commerce does not believe 
for one moment that a boy or girl is scarcer than dol- 
lars. Put a boy or girl on one side and dollars on the 
other, and we know very well what the spirit of com- 
petitive industry and commerce will say to that — dol- 
lars are scarcer than boys and girls. There are two 
thousand children to-day in thirty-three cotton mills of 
Georgia under the age of twelve and above the age of 
seven, of whom only seventeen can read and write ; 
and the man who will employ a little child of seven, 
eight or ten years, in a cotton factory does not believe 
what I am saying, that a boy or girl is scarcer than 
dollars. He says, I want dollars whatever becomes of 
boys and girls. 

But the heart falls back on this as its primal and dis- 
tinct affirmation, that boys and girls are more valuable 
than dollars. The heart knows and sets the value of 
any longing and desire and love. These are the qual- 
ities that make things valuable. The word value 
means that which makes for life, and only that which 
makes for life is valuable, and the things that make for 
most life are most valuable. What can make for life as 
much as a boy or girl, or what is so valuable to family 
or state as a boy or a girl ? The heart shall be true to its 
own feeling, where the spirit of commerce or industry 
or political economy is false to it, and will keep saying 
to itself, boys and girls are scarcer than dollars. 



BOYS ARE SCARCER THAN DOLLARS. 333 

There are some here who can affirm that out of their 
own bitter experiences and sad memories. The graves 
of the dead boys shall tell that. He who says over his 
little child, "Press lightly on her form, O mother earth ; " 
Rachel who would fain have called her child Ben-oni, 
the child of sorrow ; the widow of Sarepta reproaching 
the prophet who had given her the son whom death 
had now taken; the widow of Nam, moaning as her 
only son is borne out on the bier; and Jairus, whose 
little daughter lies in death-like sleep, these do not need 
to be taught by any one, that boys and girls are better 
than dollars. You who have lost little children may 
not call them back at any expense of dollars or time; 
but they do not lose their value as time passes on. The 
longer the stretch from now to then, the more painful 
the path down which you walk to their grave. Still, 
there yet remains a sense of their value, until you say, 
Would G-od I had them, my son, my daughter ! Would 
you sell them for dollars ? What mother or what father 
will sell their child to you ? They may give them up 
sometimes for the child's good, but only then with the 
pains and throes of a loneliness that is only second to 
the travail in which they brought them forth. 

It gives me pleasure to say that the value of life is 
rising everywhere. There was a time, so little was life 
worth that Cheops could take a hundred thousand men 
for thirty years to build a pyramid, and when he was 
through a hundred thousand corpses were thrown out 
on the desert and covered with the winding sheet of 
drifting sand. But the ancient human affections, the 
spirit of Jesus Christ, and the spirit of modern science 
have given a value to life. Why, a man is now 
worth in the world seven hundred and fifty dol- 
lars — the average man simply counting him in dol- 
lars. It is something to say that if they kill a man 
you can get damages from a railroad all the way from 



334 BOYS ARE SCARCER THAN DOLLARS. 

one thousand to twenty thousand dollars. It is some- 
thing to say that if a little child is run over by a car 
a jury will give something to the parents. But I 
am not talking of values in that way. I am glad to 
notice the extension of human life. Within twenty 
years sixty-three thousand in every million have been 
saved of those who used to die annually of preventable 
diseases. Three years of life have been added to every 
woman in England and one and a half years to every 
man. For every man and woman in the world, four 
'children must be born, because two will die befure they 
are five years of age. There is a problem on which 
medical science is working, how to keep two children 
out of every four from dying ; how to save them to be a 
source of happiness and a force of economy in the world. 
And so well has this been done that 'medical science 
gives every Christmas time this as its gift to the world, 
in the name of Christ — it gives two years of additional 
life to every baby that is born into it, two millions of 
years more life to a million babies that are born. That 
has been the gift of medical science within the last 
twenty years. And not only a gift of life, but one of 
freedom from suffering. I find the value of life is rising, 
and am glad to notice it. Science places a new esti- 
mate upon life. 

Education says : Boys are better than dollars. Horace 
Mann says : " I will make it possible for the poorest 
child in Massachusetts to have an education as good as 
the richest man can buy." And Emerson says : " Why, 
that is the greatest revolution in history, and the 
greatest daring, which takes from the pocket of one and 
gives to another in the name of justice." It is because 
boys are scarcer than dollars, that education comes 
with its present large provision. All reformation and 
all charity grow out of this, that boys are scarcer than 
dollars. We can not afford to neglect them, simply in 



BOYS ARE SCARCER THAN DOLLARS. 335 

terms of money. We will not neglect them because 
they are boys and girls, men and women, brothers and 
sisters, little ones of the Christ, our own flesh and 
blood, though they are not named with our name. 
What shall it profit — the word is continually heard 
from this pulpit and that platform, from this teacher's 
desk and that Sunday school teacher's chair — what 
shall it profit the great world, after it has become rich 
and strong, if it has lost the boys and girls ? 

Now, let us make a few applications of this thought. 
The business of life is what? To get a living? No. 
To get rich ? No. It is simply to find your place and 
use in the world and to bring up the children that 
God has committed to you to teach and to care for. 
You have a place to occupy, a work to do. When you 
are dead, you disappear from it. Nature says this to 
every one that is born, looking at it from its physical 
side. You are to grow strong and exert your genius in 
this economical way ; you are to bring children into the 
world who shall do the work of life in their way. The 
business of life, then, to lift it a little higher, is to find 
the place God will have us occupy, and the work God 
will have us to do, and then bring up children of our 
own or those entrusted to us. That is the business of 
life. 

The second thing, I have said, is the bringing up of 
children. That is equal in importance with the other. 
There need be no conflict between the two. There is 
time and space enough given by nature to do this work 
in all its relationships. We must make these conditions 
such that life may rise to its highest power and pos- 
sibility. We must provide and produce food and shel- 
ter and government and social conditions, since these 
are the conditions in which life develops. The mother 
must care for the home, that is her highest business ; to 
make its condition favorable for life, for family life. 



336 BOYS ARE SCARCER THAN DOLLARS. 

About these two centers of a man's business in the 
world and in the home, and a woman's business in the 
home and in the world, all life must revolve. Other 
things may be added as there is surplus time and sur- 
plus strength ; but this is first and this is chiefest. 

' This business of getting a living and of bringing up 
children is not then a matter of dollars, it is a matter 
of supreme destiny, what we are for. More children 
die in this world of neglect than from any other cause. 
How many can be saved? The preventable diseases 
are diseases of social neglect and home neglect. Dol- 
lars are scarcer than children to certain men, women 
and states. Therefore they neglect their children ; their 
health, happiness, education and spiritual development. 
A man's business ought to be looked upon as a means 
of caring for his family and of enlarged life, for his own 
sake and for that of others as well. It should not so 
engross his time and thought that home interests shall 
be neglected. He should leave his work as early as is 
possible, and never later than six o'clock, and give the 
rest of the time to his wife and to his children. It is 
only some awful necessity, such as life sometimes im- 
poses, that can be an excuse for any man's neglecting to 
keep this time that belongs to his family. His business 
should include the.thought of other children as well as 
his own, to make life easier and better for them. What 
is the profit at the end of the year, if you have earned 
a million dollars, and lost something of your child. 
Your dollars won't buy a boy or a girl in any market. 
This same principle can be applied in many ways. I 
have thought with the greatest pity upon the neglect 
which the children of the poor suffer. It is not usually 
the fault of their parents that they suffer neglect. It 
is due to the social pressure and the conditions of mod- 
ern business and industrial life. How many men are 
there in this town who for six months never see their 



BOYS ARE SCARCER THAN DOLLARS. 337 

children except by lamplight ? They leave early in the 
morning while the children are asleep, and they go 
back at night when the children are asleep, or sleepily, 
wearily waiting for them. There are many who do 
not know how their children look by daylight and can 
not know. It is pitiful to think of a man's children 
growing up without his knowing them, without the 
touch which only association can give, the exchange 
of sympathy and affection which makes our own life- 
relations happy. And the mother, too, of such a family 
is busy about home cares, or she is doing work to sup- 
plement the wages of her husband, which are insuffi- 
cient for life. The children can not go to school until 
they are six years old, and therefore are on the street ; 
and out of school hours the street is their play-ground. 
And what is the street education ? 

Yesterday I was in the Marion County jail and amid 
that confused and promiscuous mass ot white and black 
I found one boy twelve years old who had stolen an 
opera glass at the Park theatre. I sent for his father, 
who works three miles from here, to go and see him. 
It seemed an awful thing to me for a twelve-years-old 
boy to listen to that lewd, obscene and profane conver- 
sation ; to know that that boy will never be able, to the 
day of his death, to forget the time he was in that 
black hole, the Marion County jail. The father is a 
hard working man. He said of his boy : " He runs 
away from home. I can't see to him. I must leave in 
the morning to do my work for my family. I think he 
had better go to the reform-school." What do you 
think of it, when an honest hard-working man has to 
say the only place where his boy can be saved is at 
Plainfield, at the reform-school ? And what shall we 
say of the conditions that make it impossible for a man 
to see his children by daylight or for a woman to care 

for the children that come into the world ? 
22 



338 BOYS ARE SCARCER THAN DOLLARS. 

Is it not a pitiful thing to think that the happiest 
hour that comes to many a child is the hour of its 
death? And what shall we think of it that in the 
nineteenth century of Christianity, the best that can 
be said of a child is that it is dead; that it is free from 
the temptations of life ; that it shall not fall into de- 
struction and into the pitfalls which social neglect 
leaves or makes for it. It lies in the coffin, and now 
the face of the troublesome boy or girl, which was be- 
grimed and unlovely, takes on a wonderful beauty and 
peace. The face settles down just as it should have 
been, and claims the birthright of happiness which the 
child ought to have had. They are dying thus about 
us every day. Think of all those that are growing up 
to crime, suffering, sorrow, sin, vice and shame ! 

I do not speak of the social loss there is, but I do ask 
you to consider this : that boys and girls, other boys 
and girls, are scarcer than dollars to this great, rich 
world, and it is somehow our business to ask how we 
can help them. That is why I want to see, just as quick 
as I can, come by any means it can, an eight hour day for 
every working man : that is why I want to see the abo- 
lition by any means it can come, and as quick as it can 
come, of all woman's labor outside of home ; and that 
ie why I want to see it come, by any means it can come 
and as quick as it can come, the abolition of all child's 
labor. It is a shameful thing to think that it is necessary 
that a woman shall leave her home, and a little child 
its play and its school, to help support a family. Boys 
and girls are scarcer than dollars. 

Now, connected with this question of the loss of 
children, is that of divorce. I have little to say on 
that subject. I do not know much about it, but I do 
know that in twenty years, where there have been 
five hundred thousand divorces, there are fully three 
hundred thousand children involved, every one of whom 



BOYS ARE SCARCER THAN DOLLARS. 389 

is blighted by the sorrow, shame and trouble. They 
have been taunted with it by children ; the shadow of 
it has been upon them ; they have heard it in the court 
room; they are unfathered or unmothered. Branded 
and blighted are the three hundred thousand children 
who have passed from the divorce courts of this coun- 
try within the last twenty years. 

I have hinted at child labor. It is enough simply to 
say it is a shame to our civilization that children have 
to labor. What will you do with the muscle and 
strength of a man ? Because a boy can be got for three 
dollars a week when a man costs seven or ten dollars, 
the man must sit at home or hunt for work, while the 
boy carries on the business of life. Think of it ! 

The king of Burmah, founding a new city, spread 
the living bodies of hundreds of men and women as 
the lowest course on which the foundations rested. 
That fact shook the world with horror and the Eng- 
lish movement into Burmah was due to the re- 
action of the humane sentiment as a protest against 
that. What! Shall a man's fortune rest on a little 
child's heart? Can a man look with pleasure at 
this great cotton factory with its busy looms 
and moving splindles, and then look at the faces 
of little children between seven and ten years of 
age, and think they are laying the foundations of the 
owner's fortune ? No laughter is ever heard from them ; 
no flush of color is ever upon their faces ; no sparkle 
of happiness in their hearts ; and little development of 
intellect is possible there. But a fortune is built, per- 
haps of a million dollars, and the lowest stone of it is 
upon the writhing body and the agonized and lost mind 
of a little child. On the one hand, is the necessity of 
the situation, where a man says, I can not get along 
unless my child works ; and on the other is the fact 
that modern commerce has made this true. Here 



340 BOYS ARE SCARCER THAN DOLLARS. 

stands the man and there his boy of fourteen or twelve. 
It is true the man wants ten dollars a week, but I can 
use the ten-year-old boy for three dollars a week at the 
same work, and I will take the boy. He does take the 
boy. ~No child should labor under penalty of the con- 
fiscation of the factory or the business of the man that 
employs him; and a school idea should obtain that 
would provide for every child that is born all that the 
richest and the wisest man can do or can wish for his 
child. Children are scarcer than dollars. Let us re- 
peat it again and again. What if you did not have 
them ? What if they were not here about the street ? 
What if the schools were closed, and at twelve and 
at four there were no streams of children pouring out? 
Let us try to imagine this world without children, 
and when we measure things by dollars, let us think of 
schools that are closed and reform schools that are 
open ; of homes that are silent, and of prisons that are 
building ; and then say, which is worth the most, a boy 
or a girl on one side, or the dollar on the other. And 
let us ask ourselves, as parents and citizens and friends, 
what shall it profit a world if it shall gain a great pros- 
perity and lose a boy? Let us remember our own 
childhood, and do as we would wish to be done by ; 
and if we have had shadows and blights upon our 
childhood, let us not make that the measure of a 
child's deprivation. The thing you wish you had had, 
let that measure the happiness you try to give to boys ; 
let a business man think his family is first and not sec- 
ond ; let him leave his business early and see his chil- 
dren by daylight; let him give his employees time for 
the same, if he can ; let mothers play with their chil- 
dren, read with them, sing with them, and live with 
them. 



CHILDE ROLAND. 



842 CHILDE ROI/AND. 



We come to thee, God, whom we have not seen, 
but still know, by the mighty lift our souls have had in 
some great time of discouragement; by the strength 
that has come, we know not whence, in some moment 
of weakness ; by the patience to bear pain that has 
come in some great agony ; by the wondrous color that 
plays about our happiness, and the deeper note that is 
struck in our joy. So we come and know that we are 
embosomed in some great mysterious and powerful life, 
that some mind directs, guides and leads us along paths 
we do not know. There is not one of us but what has 
been led along an upward and forward way, though so 
different a way from that which we ourselves would 
have marked out, or that which we are continually, in 
our unwisdom, trying to find out for our children. 

Our pain and evil have often been our teachers, but 
there is not one of us that dare ask that in the coming 
year there shall come evil, or that there shall come pain 
or sorrow. We are forever praying that there shall be 
success to every effort ; accomplishment for every plan ; 
that there shall be days of happiness and hours of com- 
plete uplift ; and yet again we look back and see how 
the world has learned its lessons, has fought its way 
up, has groped its way on, has risen only to fall again, 
has struggled on and on, stumbling sometimes con- 
fusedly but still has kept its quest continually, and 
reached the better day. Prophets and saints tell us the 
same thing, that character is made perfect through dis- 
cipline, and discipline comes through trials, and trials 
through temptations and failure. 

We dare not take our lives into our own hands. We 
are not wise enough to guide our little children. We 



CHILDE ROLAND. 343 

do not know what to teach them to say nor what to 
tell them to do. We can only look at the great princi- 
ples that come out of nature, as the great mountain 
peaks rise out of the earth, and say, these show the 
axes of life ; the lines along which the human spirit 
must go. But none of us has ever been able to walk 
this way unfalteringly ; none of us has been able to say 
that it has been a triumphant passage ; that our hopes 
have been realized ; that our plans have been carried 
out; that the good we wanted to do we did. Who 
dare say it has been a splendid triumph — this life ? If 
no one else knows, we know the pillow has often been 
bedewed with tears. Where others congratulate, we, 
knowing better than any one else, say, " ^N"ot to us," as 
we shrink back from taking credit that is not ours. 
Life is not a splendid triumphant passage toward a 
great end ; it is a confused, faltering march ; a stum- 
bling and a groping walk; now seeing visions, and 
then walking in darkness ; now hearing voices and then 
,in the vast and void silence ; sometimes not even know- 
ing whether we are right or not, and then not having 
the strength to do the right ; and yet advancing, seeing 
more and more of beauty, gaining a little more strength, 
sweeping a wider vista with our vision and knowing 
that the end, the house of God, at some time shall come 
to us. 

So we trust thee with our lives, as flowers do, though 
not so obediently; trust thee as birds do, though not 
so fully. If we could, life would be a gladder song 
than it is and of more wonderful beauty. But they 
lack that which we have, the strength of character. 
We have had the pain of sin and the joy of its conquest 
and the sweetness of its forgiveness. It is not that we 
have done right, but that having done wrong, we have 
risen to hate the wrong. It is not that our armor is un- 
dinted, but that we have conquered. It is not that we 



344 CHILDB ROLAND. 

have not made mistakes, but that having made them we 
have learned obedience and wisdom by the things that 
we have suffered; and so as we go on, at last we shall 
come to thee, with body and with face marred and disfig- 
ured, scarred and broken, the results of our conflict, but 
still, as we hope, undaunted in spirit, hating that which is 
false, and loving that which is good, through Jesus 
Christ. Amen. 




CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER 

CAME. 



" Having done all, to stand." 
Ephesians vi, 13. 

"I will lead them in paths that they have not known." 
Isaiah xlii, 16. 

POEM of Browning has very much interested 
and fascinated me. It is somewhat mysterious 
to those who read it first, and I suppose it has a 
different thought for each one who makes it a study. 
The poets are, after all, our greatest religious inter- 
preters. 

This poem of Robert Browning is " Childe Roland 
to the Dark Tower Came." The suggestion of it is a 
line from King Lear, this and nothing more : "Childe 
Roland to the dark tower came." Who Childe Ro- 
land was, where the dark tower was, why he came to 
the dark tower, what he did when he got there, no 
commentator on Shakespeare has ever been able to 
tell. But this mysterious line has a certain fascination, 
as all mystery has, aud was chosen as the subject of 
Robert Browning's poem. The line of thought that 
runs through the poem is this : A knight, battered as 
to his armor, weary and broken, who has some quest 
upon which he is set, comes to the edge of a plain 



346 CHILDE ROLAND. 

where a cripple sits with malicious leer; and to him 
he puts his question, "Where is the dark tower?" 
He points across the plain and indicates a certain place 
where he will find it, hut laughs as he says it, so that 
the man believes that it is a lie that is being told him, 
and yet, after all, dare not treat it as a lie, for it may 
he true; and the last look he has of the cripple is of 
his malicious smile, as if saying, "Go on, poor fool, like 
so many others, into the trap that awaits you." He is 
so tired with his long quest that even this does not irri- 
tate him. Such a lassitude comes to him that things 
do not vex him. He hardly has the life to reject what 
he believes to be a lie ; and it is only the feeling that 
the end of his quest is near, whatever the end may be, 
that makes him stumble on again. As he throws a 
backward look, the cripple has disappeared ; and the 
high road along which he has come is all one great 
waste plain ; a plain, mean with scant grass, and the 
lurid look of rusty plants. Nature turns an unkindly 
face to him. Look where he will, there is nothing to 
encourage him to go on. A miserable, old, blind horse, 
so abject, so utterly miserable, that it seems, he says, as 
if "thrust out past service from the devil's stud" and 
had been all its life in the service of sin, stands there 
with bent limbs and colloped neck. 

He turns his thought within from the unhappy out- 
look. He tries to live in memory; but as he goes back 
into past days, every figure he would call np, looks at 
him strangely and he finds no pleasure. That was a 
large band which started out on this quest. But one 
by one they had fallen away. Some grew hopeless as 
to the tower itself; some were wearied ont physically; 
some went upon other quests, drawn this way or that ; 
some disgraced themselves and died as traitors. He 
sees the yellow hair of Cuthbert and hears again the 
splendid vow of G-iles ; but " one night's disgrace " left 



CHILDE ROLAND. -347 

Cnthbert forever behind; and Giles, he remembered, 
had pinned to his breast the placard of traitor by the 
hangman who put him to death. Looking backward, 
he finds no encouragement, as looking forward he finds 
none. 

He stumbles on, weary in body, discouraged in mind. 
Xo splendor of vision and no encouragement of voice. 
A little river passes by him, but with none of the joy- 
ous ripple of a river; its bleak banks lighted up only 
by spumes of foam beating against wretched alders and 
tearing off their few remaining leaves as it passes by 
them. As he fords it, using his spear as a staff*, it seems 
to him that he treads upon the body of some drowned 
man and hears the shriek of a little child; or it may 
be the shriek of a water rat into which his spear is 
thrust. On the other side, the earth is trampled as by 
fighting hosts ; but there are no footmarks toward the 
place and none from it. 

Near by is a great wheel, an instrument of torture 
of the middle ages, rusty now, with its suggestions of 
cruelty and of death, that always awaited in those 
times the pioneer of thought and of faith — such a 
wheel, he says, as might draw out and spin men's 
bodies like silk. Where should he then find any en- 
couragement to continue his quest? Where is the 
splendid step of the conqueror by vision attended? 
Where are the voices that ought to lift up the man 
who seeks the ideal? Mean looks of nature, cruel sug- 
gestions of man, suggestions of struggle and of failure ! 

Just then a raven, as it goes b} 7 , flaps its wing against 
his helmet and he looks up. There is a half familiar 
look about the mountains or low mean hills which are 
about him. These were none of the hills to which a 
man may lift up his eyes or his heart; but scrubby and 
low hills that seemed to shut him in. There is no joy 
about him. The red sun just setting throws back its 



348 CHILDE ROLAND. 

dying light into his face, as if saying to him, what is 
the good of all the endeavor of your life? -4 n d. this 
strange familiarity, he says, comes from the fact that 
that which has been described to him as the surround- 
ing scenery of the tower is here. And there is the 
tower, the object of his quest — not a lordly building, 
lifting its splendid towers in the air, but a low, squat, 
brown turret, unlike that which he had pictured, re- 
pellant rather than attractive. His ideal even has failed 
him here; and yet while this disappointment has come 
to him, notwithstanding he has had no encouragement, 
no visions to light his way, and no companion to cheer 
him, he still stumbles along, seeing nothing and know- 
ing nothing. The poem closes with the word, that, 
notwithstanding this, " Dauntless, the slug-horn to my 
lips I set, and blew. ' Childe Roland to the dark tower 
came.' " 

This is a very mysterious poem, and I doubt not that 
any one who will read it once will find it so. Perhaps 
you who read it in the light of this interpretation 
may find a suggestion in it. I see a man who sets out 
on some, great noble errand. He has a noble ideal to 
which he swears allegiance ; certain principles of life 
to which he pledges his faith ; but he has been so long- 
delayed in it, the way has been so long, the discourage- 
ments so many, the failures of friends so disappointing, 
that at last, broken, discouraged, weary, utterly out of 
heart, not lifted by anything which we usually think 
lifts the hero, he plods on, and at last comes to where 
his very ideal is seen and he is disappointed even in that. 
A squat tower appears where once he thought the City 
of God would lift itself. Notwithstanding all this dis- 
couragement and weariness and protracted labor ; not- 
withstanding his hopes have died almost away, and 
his effort is relaxed, and even his enthusiasms are 
wasted, at the last, still true to his word, dauntless he 



CHILDE ROLAND. 349 

sets to his lips the horn and blows his blast of defiance 
and of victory. 

Now, it is the common thought that any one who 
sets out on a noble quest, any or*e who lifts up before 
life an ideal, who takes certain principles by whicb to 
rule life, shall have a conqueror's march through the 
world. It would seem as if all the promises which the 
Good Book says should be his should be fulfilled to 
him. It would seem as if events ought to favor him ; that 
he ought to see grow more and more beautiful the object 
of his quest. It would seem as if the principle by which 
he seeks to regulate his life ought always to be in sight, 
always clearly defined, and he ought to know his duty 
and ought to have strength to do it. Surely he, if any 
one, this man trying to do God's will and speak God's 
word in the world, ought to have voices to cheer him ; 
ought not to grope in uncertainties ; ought not to en- 
counter the inertia of nature and the obstructions of 
men. He who hitches his wagon to a star, we would 
say, ought to sweep through God's universe as a star 
does without hindrance and with clear, splendid shin- 
ing. But I think that history and observation and ex- 
perience do not warrant us in any such thought as that. 
On the contrary, I believe that the experience of any 
young man or woman who starts out in life will be 
strongly parallel to that of Childe Roland on his quest 
for the tower. 

I will say this : that most of us live more or less that 
pitiful, painful poem. God gives to each man or 
woman, in this world, an ideal, some one great thing 
to work for; some one phase of the many colored 
thing we call life. Each child has it. It is the love of 
the best. What the best is, no one may say for an- 
other ; but somehow we feel as if life ought to be used 
for large and noble purposes. This is the ideal of 
life to us, then, to make of life a quest, and we give 



350 CHILDE ROLAND. 

our allegiance to this ideal. Boys and girls do this 
when they are excited, by the splendid recountal of 
heroic endeavor of this man or that woman ; when 
they are nerved by the examples of others, then they 
swear a faith. We all see certain principles in life, 
or think we do ; perhaps we see them more clearly 
when we are in youth than when we are men and 
women. The ideals of righteousness, of truth, of 
justice, of a noble life, we see clearly and we swear 
fealty to these principles. We will live to them and 
nothing less. Now let good angels come to our help. 
Let visions play before us; that we may always see 
this ideal lifting itself like one of God's mountains. 
Let voices sustain us that we may always hear, if not 
the words of men, at least the voice of God. But, 
strangely enough, these things are not true. They are 
not true. The hero is not always a hero to himself. 
The man of clear vision does not always see his way. 

The first thing that a man encounters who is trying 
to live a good life is time, the protraction of his effort. 
The thing that seemed so near seems so far ; days come 
and go, months and years, and the man is old; and still 
he has not reached it, or lived the life he thought of 
living. "The thoughts of youth,' 1 ' says Longfellow, 
" are long, long thoughts." It is weary waiting. If we 
could only do our work and have it done with ; if we 
could simply accomplish it at whatever cost, well and 
good. But oh, to wait on, years and years, and see 
little accomplishment of it — that is the first difficulty 
that comes to us. 

And the next is the inertia of the world. The earth is 
old, and fixed in its habits and customs, and does not 
listen and does not respond to the thing that seems so 
good to us and so true ; is so slow to adapt itself, if it 
adapt itself at all ; it will not listen to us, and then we 



CHILDE ROLAND. 351 

wonder why men will not see this thing that seems so 
true to us, why they will not attend to it. 

And the next thing we encounter is, not inertia, but 
positive opposition ; the opposition of those whose 
customs it interferes with; whose self-satisfaction it 
breaks up ; whose vested rights it seems to despise. So 
it meets the positive opposition of men. 

And then the next thing that the buoyant soul en- 
counters is misunderstanding, perhaps the loss of com- 
radeship, just as Cuthbert, or as Giles, or as others 
of this little company, this band of those who swore to 
seek the dark tower, fell off one by one. Every man 
has found out at some time that the person he thought 
he could depend on does not see life as he does, and he 
feels a disappointment. The way seems so clear to us 
that we wonder that others do not see it. 

Yet another thing is the loss of the vision. ]S r ow, it 
seems strange to say it, that the man who sets up this 
ideal of life and pledges himself to it, does not always 
see it ; but it is true. There never was a soul yet that 
tried to live God's life that saw things clear from day 
to day. There never was a spirit yet so lighted up that 
it never had its moments of doubt and confusion. 
There never was a man who tried to tread the path of 
life who did not sometimes grope for a clue as to where 
he was, and whether he was right or not, and whether 
it was true that he was treading the way and whether it 
was best. I tell you the most painful moment that 
comes to a man is when he has to take account of him- 
self and ask, after all, am I right in this thing? The 
vision leaves us again and again, becomes clouded and 
confused. We grope and wander and lose our way. 

Then there is another thing worse than that ; and 
that is when even God's providence seems estranged, 
and a man says, "My God, my God, why hast thou for- 
saken me? " That is the last and worst thing 1 that can 



852 CHILDE ROLAND. 

come. A man may encounter the opposition of time 
and can break it down by bis patience ; be can encoun- 
ter tbe inertia of the world and conquer it by his per- 
sistence ; he can meet the opposition of men and break 
that down by his high hope and courage ; he can bear 
to be alone, and even at times he can grope, if only he 
knows the light is there. But if sometimes there 
comes to him the question, Why, God, hast thou 
left me alone? then the very depths of despair are 
reached; this is the' very gloom of life. I say that is 
the history of every one in one way or another. We 
have all trod this same path. We have had our 
doubts and onr confusions ; our feeling that God's 
providence is estranged from us ; we have felt the loss 
of companionship, the lack of sympathy. 

Now, let me draw another life-parallel — the life of 
Jesus. He is nourished among the hills of Galilee ; fed 
by the splendid memories and hopes of his people — the 
great national hope of Judea. He remembered the bat- 
tle which was fought twelve miles from his home ; he 
had been a sympathetic observer. The call comes from 
the Jordan, " The kingdom of heaven is at hand." He 
hears it ; throws aside his carpenter's apron, kisses his 
mother; goes to meet John at the Jordan. It is the 
call to life which every young man and woman re- 
sponds to ; not knowing what it is, but hearing a voice 
that reaches the innermost recesses of the spirit. 
From the Jordan, with a certain consciousness that he 
is dedicated to a great purpose in life, he goes into the 
silence of the mountains about Jericho, and there medi- 
tates upon his plan of life. That life is not a mere 
question of bread and butter; that life is not given 
merely to feed a man ; that life is not for power that is 
gained by obeisance to the splendid majesty of wrong. 

He comes out and one after another draws to him a 
little company. They hang upon his words. " Never 



CHILDE ROLAND. 358 

man spake as this man spake." " To whom shall we 
go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life." He ex- 
cites them ; enthusiasms light up within them ; they 
feel the stress and push of a strong desire; the multi- 
tude comes about him ; he heals their sicknesses and 
comforts their minds. Wherever he goes, the mass oi 
people attend him. They eat the bread that he breaks 
for them ; they hang upon the words that he speaks to 
them ; they bring their deaf and blind to him and he 
heals them ; and then, when he tries to tell them what 
life is, that it is not in bread, but in truth and justice, 
the multitude begins to fall away from him; and he 
encounters his first obstruction — the inertia of the 
world that will not respond. They will not come unto 
him, he says, that they might have life. 

Then the oppositions gather, the oppositions of re- 
ligion, whose traditions he has broken ; whose long- 
time customs he has despised; whose central state- 
ments he has denied ; the oppositions of society whose 
injustice he has denounced, and whose vested rights he 
has interfered with. Here he encounters his second 
opposition. 

Then he encounters yet another thing, and that is 
the dull insensitiveness of the people who are about 
him, who simply follow him for the thrones on which 
they may sit at some time. And yet again, the visions 
have gone, the splendid visions of Galilee, the open- 
ing heaven of the Jordan and the ministering angel o 
the wilderness — these have gone. He walks along 
with head down; he says, am I right? Do you dare 
think it, that this Christ said, am I right ? He did. 
" Now, is my soul troubled ? " What shall I say ? Shall 
I say, save me from this hour and its consequences? 
He works it out as he walks. The visions have gone ; 
the faces have gone. He is walking in darkness and 
groping, as men do, who no longer see their way clear. 

23 



354 :lde roland. 

He escapes to tlie mountains and sits where the light 
of the morning sun shines on his face and ripples over 
his garments : and there they who were near heard, as 
it were, his talking. He looked over the whole of 
history and in it all, saw onlv two great characters 
whom he thought were on the same line with himself, 
Moses, alone with God, hearing the burden of a hard- 
hearted people, and Elijah alone withstanding the great 
idolatrous tide. He reaches out a hand, communes with 
them, and comes down from the mountain with more 
Life/ 

So upon that finely organized mind the shadows be- 
d to creep. I have told you that men are afraid to 
die until death defines itself. They shrink from cruelty 
and from harsh handling of unsympathetic and rude 
men. He. too. is feeling it. Xow comes the night of 
nights in Gethsemane. He is absolutely alone. Even 
those who were with him have fallen asleep. Could 
you not have watched with me one hour ? is the cry of 
agony in his heart. Xo. he is alone. If it be possible, 
let this cup of agony pass from me ; nevertheless, not 
> I will but as thou wilt. Still holding on, although 
he can not hear the voice and can not see the face. 
Lere is no encouragement. The dark shadows of the 
olives there are not more dense than the clouds that 
roll over his spirit. All he can say is that he will not 
flinch. He will not say that right is wrong and wrong is 
right. He still holds on. The next dav he is led to the 
hall of Caiaphas and thence to Pilate's judgment hali, 
and out to Golgotha bearing his cross. Surely now the 
vision will come, the voice will cheer, and he will see 
straight into the mind of God. Xo. not yet. Xo vision, 
no voice, no clearing-up of the spirit : nothing but sim- 
ply holding on, simply holding on. As they drive the 
nails through his feet, he says : ; - Father, forgive them, 
thev know not what thev do.'' Still faithful to his 



CHILDE ROLAND. 355 

spirit of forgiveness. As they lift hirn upon the cross 
and the thief beside him, he says : " This day thou 
shalt be with me in paradise." Still loyal to the miser- 
able, the broken and the bad, that he had kept com- 
pany with. On the cross he was athirst and they tried 
to give him a narcotic which he refused. Still loyal to 
the fact that a man must go to God clear-eyed, and 
take what comes with all the native strength within 
him, whatever it may be. To John he said : " Behold 
thy mother ! " To the mother he says : " Behold thy 
son ! " Still mindful of human relationships in the 
midst of gnawing agonies of dreadful physical torture. 
The clouds come yet closer. God's face does not shine. 
" My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? " The 
highest claim of his whole life, and yet the clouds do 
not break through. Yet a^ain one moment : still no 
light, but, " Father, into thy hands I commend my 
spirit." I leave myself with you ; I can not see ; I do 
not know. I simply trust on, dark as it is ; and then 
with a great sigh, " It is finished."' 

jSTow, in reviewing this thought and summing it up, I 
say this : " Haviug done all, to stand." Sometimes 
that is all you can do. In your endeavor to live under- 
stand this : That the glory of the quest, and the splen- 
dor of the ideal, and the absolute truth of the prin- 
ciple will not lead you like a conqueror through the 
world. Time will oppose to you its long, weary years; 
earth will show to you the inertia of its dullness and 
insensitiveness ; many cowards will follow along your 
wav for a time and will leave you in the hour of dark- 
ness ; oppositions will accumulate of those whose inter- 
ests you have interfered with in church or in state ; the 
visions will disappear which made life so good and so 
glad ; the voices that sustained you will go silent ; the 
face of God, perhaps, will grow dark. What are you 
going to do then ? This is the common experience of 



356 CHILDE ROLAND. 

# 

men. Stand. That is all. Endure to the end. Whether 
you see God's face or not, stand. Whether any reward 
comes or not, stand. Whether the visions appear or 
not, stand. That is all. 

I tell you when a man comes to God at last, having 
stood, God must look upon him very much as men look 
upon the soldiers that came back from the war, dusty, 
ragged, worn, sunburned, and limping along, but they 
had stood. That war seemed such a little thiug in 
1861, when the call was made and so many thousands- 
leaped forward to say, yes, we will go ; and shouted "On 
to Richmond ;" and it was thought to be only a week's 
hurried work. But the weeks rolled out into years and 
years, and the obstructions came ; there were doubts and 
uncertainties of principle as well as of issue ; there was- 
failure and defeat. All that, but still they stood. " Hav- 
ing done all, stand." We. have to do it in life. Who* 
knows the way through life from beginning to end ? If 
such there be, some fortunate one, I can not say that I 
envy him, but I know I wonder at him. God's conquer- 
ors have not come out of this life with burnished armor 
and floating plume. No, with dented armor and broken 
helm and bruised body, they have come. They have 
not heard the playing of trumpets and seen the float- 
ing of welcoming banners. Many of them have had 
to die in the dark, saying : " My God, why hast thou 
forsaken me ? " 

That is the lesson of the morning. It comes to me 
again and again. I have lived through these things. 
That is why I can talk about them. There is not a foot- 
step here that I have not pressed with my own foot f 
and I dare say that many who are here can say the 
same thing. Let us understand it and take it as it is. 
With what we believe to be the universe on our side,, 
then barrenness of nature, unloveliness of suggestion^ 



OHILDE ROLAND. 357 

fritter oppositions of men and the clouding and uncer- 
tainty of the issue, count for but little. 

Let us stand in righteousness and truth and peace 
with other men. As is our hope so is our belief, that 
there is a God on whose side we work and who has 
ability to help us ; we believe there is an expansion as 
well as an extension of life beyond. How proudly shall 
they come in at the last who have fought the good 
fight and have finished their course and have kept their 
faith. Oh, he leads them by ways that they have not 
known. 



JUSTICE, DIVINE AND HUMAN 




JUSTICE, DIVINE AND HUMAN. 

' ' The judgynents of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. 

Psalm xix, 9. 

'OU will recognize these words, my friends, as 
forming a part of that often quoted second in- 
7 1 augural of President Lincoln, in 1865. They 
have won their way among the sacred treasures of lit- 
erature. The world will never forget them. Time, as 
it sifts the utterances of men, will retain the words of 
Mr. Lincoln, not only for the exquisite beauty of form 
in which they are couched, but also for the deep 
thoughts which inform them. Repeated though they 
have been so often, let me recall them for you to-day : 
" Fervently do we hope, earnestly do we pray that this 
terrible curse of war shall speedily pass away. But if 
it is the will of G-od that it shall endure until the ac- 
cumulated wealth of the bondsmen's two hundred and 
fifty years of unrequited toil, shall have been spent, and 
for every drop of blood drawn by the lash there shall 
be another drawn by the sword, yet still shall we say, 
as it was said of old, ' The judgments of the Lord are 
true and righteous altogether.'" I am not quite ac- 
curate in the quoting of this ; but I have given it al- 
most word for word. 

Thurlow Weed wrote to Mr. Lincoln congratulating 
him on the beauty of the expression of these words as 



362 JUSTICE, DIVINE AND HUMAN. 

well as on the truths they contain. But they are sig- 
nificant to us for this reason, that they discern with 
unerring vision the fact to which I alluded last Sunday 
morning : That there is a great law of compensation in 
this world — not capricious, not accidental, but* a law 
intelligible and everywhere operative; that where on 
the one hand there is unrequited toil of the slave, there 
will be on the other, the spending of that treasure in war ; 
that everywhere that a drop of blood is drawn by the 
lash there shall be another drawn by the sword ; that 
the balances of Justice, however they may seem to dip 
for the time, ultimately readjust themselves and stand 
equal. 

The power to discern this fact in life, is the mark of 
a great man, the mark of a great mind ; to be able to see 
that we are simply paying one of Nature's debts; that 
we have, as we thought, enjoyed two hundred and 
fifty years of unrequited toil, piling up wealth; that 
Nature knows no such thing as the condoning of an 
offense or the wiping out of a contract, but in the inex- 
orable years the time comes when payment is enforced,, 
payment in kind — unrequited toil must be paid for by 
the spending of the accumulated treasure; and the 
blood drawn by the lash must be repaid by that drawn 
by the sword. In other words, Lincoln saw, what every 
thoughtful man sees, that the foundations of this uni- 
verse rest on justice ; that the judgments of the Lord 
are not accidental, but are true and righteous alto- 
gether. 

Mr. Carlyle said that he never understood the move- 
ment of Divine Providence in the world until he had 
studied the French Revolution, and there saw that that 
was but the insistence of nature on the payment of just 
debts ; and that for every drop of blood drawn from a 
peasant, and for every dollar taken from his earnings, 



JUSTICE, DIVINE AND HUMAN. 363 

there must be paid at some time the terrible score of 
which the French Revolution was a partial recouping. 

We must understand what revolutions mean. They 
are simply the attempts of God in nature and in life to 
readjust the unsettled balance that is here. The beam 
of the scales has dipped down there. In God's good 
time, slowly the other side dips too. By and by, you 
have it level ; the balances are even. It is true, as a 
Florentine says, "God does not pay on Saturday;" not 
every week, not regularly; but invariably the unsettled 
balance readjusts itself; and at some time payment for 
injustice is made either in revolution, in sorrow or in 
war. 

We are to talk to-day of justice. This is one of the 
essential elements of the religion of the soul. We 
handle the word lightly, but do not always understand 
just what its meaning is. I trust you are prepared to 
see that it is one of the essential elements of religion, 
common to all religions and operative everywhere. We 
usually picture Justice as a blind-folded goddess hold- 
ing scales in her hands. By that we seem to say that 
justice must be blind but must deal fairly. To be sure 
there is a certain commercial picturing in this which 
is not pleasant. It is rather the picture of a commer- 
cial age than it is of a deeply spiritual age. Giotto, the 
great painter of Italy, painted on the walls of the 
church of the Madonna dell' Arena, in Padua, another 
conception of Justice, a beautiful woman seated, com- 
posed of manner, majestic of mien, weighing things, 
not in scales, but by the fine touch of her hand, weigh- 
ing not commodities but men ; and in one outstretched 
hand, the left hand, is an unjust man, and in the other, 
is a just man. 

The conception, then, of that great painter was that 
Justice is not blind-folded, but open-eyed, working in- 
telligently ; and that she weighs things, not according 



364 JUSTICE, DIVINE AND HUMAN. 

to commercial methods, not by scales, but by the fine 
instincts and impulsions of the soul, and that the re- 
munerations, the rewards or the punishments, are such 
as follow from the soul itself, and not simply pains that 
are imposed or rewards that are given. 

The word justice we ought to understand. It comes 
from a word meaning to tie or bind together. That 
which binds particle to particle in relationships is the 
law of justice. Suppose you were in the Arctic regions, 
seemingly alone ; you would be a law to yourself. If 
hungry and you could find a seal, you would kill it ; if at- 
tacked by a white bear, you must defend yourself. The 
whole barren waste of the universe is yours to occupy as 
best you may. But the moment another man is ship- 
wrecked there, then there must be set up between you 
and that man a certain law of relationship. You must 
necessarily adjust your lives to each other. If hungry 
and there be only one seal, there must be some law of 
division ; if attacked by a bear, there must be some law 
of defense, mutual cooperation of effort, mutual adjust- 
ment of relations. The moment there are two men in 
the world the law of relation asserts itself. It is the 
unconscious expression of what we may call the law of 
justice. The law of justice grows up between human 
beings, parts of a great social whole. Wherever there 
are men there must be laws of adjustment, property 
rights, consideration of mutual conditions, cooperation 
for defense or for large effort. And you will see the 
law of justice is a bond that binds us each to the other 
for defense in danger, something which determines the 
place that we shall occupy and the things that we shall 
do in the presence of each other. It is the part of the 
great law of adjustment or relation that works 
through nature. 

Between the stars that we see in the heavens, no mat- 
ter how great the space that separates them, there is a 



JUSTICE, DIVINE AND HUMAN. 365 



delicate adjustment, according to what we call the law 
of gravitation. This is simply the law of physical 
justice, the law according to which sun and moon and 
planets adjust themselves to each other. The atoms 
that go into the most minute thing obey automatically, 
unconsciously, the law of justice. Each finds its place, 
each does its work, each adjusts itself to its neighbor 
by certain minute impulses which we can not under- 
stand. 

Every part of a flower obeys the natural law of jus- 
tice, finds its place about the central axis and its place 
or relation towards every other ; does its own work, 
and leaves its neighbor to do its work ; the whole be- 
ing related, then, to the surrounding air and to the 
earth out of which it comes. 

A subtle chain of countless rings of relationship 
binds us together, each part to part, each part to the 
great idea of the whole, and the whole to the great 
ever-present Mind above. This is the law of justice 
that runs through nature, the law of relationship, at 
one time called the law of gravitation, and at another 
the law of justice, of social dependence, or social rela- 
tion. It is the law of order ; it is that which brings 
order out of confusion. There is no confusion in the 
movements of the heavenly bodies, because they obey 
the law of gravitation, which is the law of justice. 
There is no confusion in the atoms that make up any 
body, stone or flower. Each obeys the impulsion that 
comes from the heart of God. 

There is confusion in humanity and in our social 
conditions because we do not obey the law of justice, 
which is the law of order. Our households, some of 
us know by experience, when the good wife is gone, 
fall into confusion. We find we have not realized how 
much work and care it took to keep everything in its 
place. The books are piled upon the floor, or gather 



366 JUSTICE, DIVINE AND HUMAN 



upon the table ; the dust appears on the mantel-piece 
and on picture frames. She comes back, looks around 
and grasps the situation. But a few hours have gone 
when a spirit of order seems to reign. 

A mind that loves peace and order has come in ; a 
clear, intelligent mind has brought to bear the law of 
relationship, which is the law of order, in the house. 
A great factory is bankrupt or is in a bad condition. 
A man comes into it who understands the laws of trade, 
has a resolute will, and clear, definite purpose. It takes 
but a little while for things to stand in a relation 
of order; part answers to part, and each thing finds 
ts place and its use, and the development of the power 
that is in it. Disorder has disappeared, confusion and 
chaos reign no longer ; the business is re-organized. 

A man takes hold of the finances of a state and 
brings the same order out of its confusion. He has 
picked out a certain man for a certain thing, defines 
his duties, keeps him in his place, and order reigns. 
So it is in government. So it is in the midst of a 
demoralized army which has lost its discipline, its 
courage and hope. One man comes along who knows 
his men, plans out his work, selects his instruments, 
defines the duties of each. Order conies, and peace 
follows ; there is a strong, unified body there. What 
nas done it? The law of relation, of part to part, 
and of part to whole, has been set up. We call it 
the law of relation. It is but one phase of the law 
of justice, which is in society what the law of gravi- 
tation is in matter, reducing things to order, finding a 
place and use for things, keeping them in their places, 
insisting upon the right of this and the duty of that. 

Can you see, then, how this Mind of the universe 
moves forward, amid things large and small, trying to 
bring order out of confusion by setting up the law of 



JUSTICE, DIVINE AND HUMAN. 36/ 

relationship between the different parts of the great 
whole ? Whether it is stone or flower or moon or star 
it matters not. The law of justice disentangles con- 
fused things, takes a man out of the place that he is 
not fit for and puts him into the place for which he is 
fitted. This is the object of the great God of justice. 
You will see now how our modern conception of Divine 
Justice is a misconception ; we think of God's justice as 
something which is punishing men or rewarding them, 
and not of God's justice as a great law of order in the 
world, disentangling its confused conditions. Men have 
got a little glimpse of God at work at something, and 
supposed that was all that he did. 

Again I say, it is our old illustration of our court 
room that is going into the administration of the 
Almighty — of the Judge who sits to punish and to re- 
ward. That is not all the function of a judge. A law- 
yer tells me more cases are decided in the office than 
are decided in the court. A good lawyer settles a case 
before it goes to court; brings the two opposing par- 
ties together and talks with one and with the other, 
and clears up the confusions ; acts as an advocate of 
conciliation; explains away misunderstandings; and 
all at once they have come together, they adjust their 
mutual relations in peace. The function of a court is 
not to punish or to reward so much as to clear up con- 
fusions, to bring opposing things into relations har- 
monious and peaceful. The conception of God as sit- 
ting as a judge on a great judgment seat, is simply an 
illustration of a little phase of his operation in the 
world; but not true in the whole, and not true when 
taken as a fact. But if we shall get a conception that 
God is bringing order into the confused world by 
means of what we call the law of justice, we shall get 
an idea of the divine justice that will help us. 



368 JUSTICE, DIVINE AND HUMAN. 

Our modern conception of justice talks about God's 
justice and God's mercy. Let us think of that for a 
moment. God's justice demands that sinners shall be 
punished ; God's mercy steps in to lift from them their 
punishment. Dear friends, there can be no such thing 
as that in this world. Human justice in its attempt is 
imperfect. We all feel the infirmities of human testi- 
mony. The wardens in Jeffersonville prison pointed 
out to me a man that was probably innocent of the 
crime for which he was committed, and yet he is pun- 
ished. Human laws can not administer perfect justice. 
A judge says, " I know that I am not getting at perfect 
justice;" and gives the prisoner the benefit of some 
doubt, and therefore we call it his mercy. But what 
an imperfect thing it is. A law that is perfect can have 
no conception of mercy. Where there is perfect jus- 
tice, there is no need of mercy ; a man does not ask it, 
there is no demand for it. Mercy and justice imply im- 
perfect administration of imperfect laws. 

Perfect justice is recognized at once. When I delib- 
erately put my finger into a flame and burn it, I ask no 
mercy. " You fool," I say, " take your medicine. You 
made your mistake. You deliberately did it. You 
ought to have known better. Now take the pain of it 
and get along as best you can." Natural justice never 
demands mercy. The perfect administration of a just 
law has no room for it. The infinite God who knows 
all things distributes things justly, and does not need 
to come in afterwards and say, " I forgot something. I 
didn't take into account this or that ; therefore I will 
be merciful." The just is the merciful; the merciful is 
the just. 

These mal-administrations of human laws must not 
be taken to measure divine methods by. Divine justice 
gives to each one what he ought to have ; and is giving 



JUSTICE, DIVINE AND HUMAN. 369 

it to him all the while. Where human injustice dis- 
tributes the conditions, the Infinite Justice may be hin- 
dered in his endeavor ; may have to make compensa- 
tions in the future, as doubtless he will. But it is 
enough for us to know all the while the effort of the 
Infinite Justice to distribute to each one according to 
his need and his right. Human justice now is an at- 
tempt to realize that. " Law," said the ecclesiastical 
historian, Hooker, " hath her seat in the bosom of God." 
All human law comes out of the bosom of God. Human 
justice is an attempt to do justice to man. How infirm 
it is we well know ; but if once we see that justice is in 
human relationships what gravitation is among great 
planets, what attraction is in the minute particles of 
bodies, what social order is — we shall at once see how 
human justice must take up this work. 

Human justice is simply an attempt, then, to distrib- 
ute clearly and fairly to every man his place and his 
opportunity. We are born, each of us, in the midst of 
human conditions. Human lust, greed, ambition have 
disordered the perfect mechanism of the world; there- 
lore there is a confusion in the affairs of men. But 
human justice tries as best it may to distribute to each 
thing equally according to its intelligence and accord- 
ing to its obedience, according to its sense of what is 
right. Our laws do it, in part; our institutions doit, 
in part. Vaguely we try, feebly we grope in our en- 
deavor to do justice to our fellow-men. So much ot 
justice as we do, brings order and peace; so much in- 
justice as we do, brings revolutions and confusions, 
multiplies sorrows and sins. This we are to remember 
all the while: "The judgments of the Lord are true 
and righteous altogether." Human injustice produces 
war and confusion; human justice brings peace and 
order. 



24 



370 JUSTICE, DIVINE AND HUMAN. 



Let one man do as he would be done by, and all at 
once a center of crystallization has been set up in the 
midst of the confusion of the world, and a little king- 
dom of peace is set up, with its light and its hope and 
its joy. Let one hundred men determine on justice, 
and a great city would be taken possession of, every- 
thing that worked for disorder and confusion would 
slink to its hole and hide its face and at last disappear. 
So dear is justice to God, such a part of the universe 
is it, that when even one man does it, light comes, and 
the kingdom of God is here. 

" As ye would that men should do to you," said 
Jesus, " do ye even so to them." That is the law of 
justice. Every man has a certain right in this world. 
Every man has a certain duty in this eWorld. My right 
is my neighbor's duty ; my duty is my neighbor's right. 
The thing I ought to do is the thing he ought to have. 
Rights and duties, you see, are simply phases of justice. 
Let us repeat it : Justice consists in rights and duties. 
My rights in the world become my neighbor's duties ; 
my duties are simply the endeavor to secure my neigh- 
bor in his rights. The rights of a man are to develop 
the powers and faculties that are in him. 

The Declaration of Independence was voiced by a 
French philosopher, Rousseau. But it was voiced be- 
fore him by Jesus Christ in the golden rule ; and it was 
voiced before him by every thoughtful, religious man 
that was ever born into the world. It is one of the 
ancient laws. Every one is entitled by birth to the 
utmost development of his power and faculty. That is 
his right. And my duty is to help him to gain his right 
— it is simply an act of justice. Wherever there is a 
boy or a man that can not read, he has a right to in- 
telligence ; and it is my duty and the duty of the 
state to see that he has the opportunity of reading. 



JUSTICE, DIVINE AND HUMAN. 371 

Wherever there is a starved soul, there is an act of in- 
justice. He has a right to all the music, painting, 
light, knowledge and happiness that there is in this 
world. Every longing is God's promise of fulfillment. 

Every man, woman and child that is born into this 
world is entitled to air to breathe, sunlight to kiss his 
forehead, music to charm his soul, playing forms of 
color to delight his eye, earth to stand upon, room to 
work in. Everything that is needed to develop the 
powers and faculties of him is his divine right. And 
there will be revolutions and questions and changes 
until every man comes to his right; for the infinite 
God stands behind him, whispering to him all the 
while in the name of justice, that he shall have it. 
You can not crush it down. Laws can not stop it; 
serried columns of armies are powerless — for the whole 
universe stands behind one man that is defrauded, by 
consent or active organization, of the full development 
of every power and faculty with which he was born. 
That is what makes this such a splendid world to be 
born into, a world of justice. That is why legislatures 
are trying to bring order. That is why organized 
efforts are seeking to efface discontent. 

Here is the secret of it : We move along our com- 
mon daily way, inattent, it may be, to this or to that ; 
suddenly a cry of injustice is raised, and it becomes im- 
perative upon us all. The two parties in England have 
been quarreling about the Irish question for eight hun- 
dred years. One tosses it to another and the other back 
again. Each seeks to make political capital out of it. 
By and by one man puts it in this form : " It is time we 
did justice to Ireland." Here is a calm, quiet state- 
ment, the introduction of a new word — justice to Ire- 
land. It breaks parties asunder, it turns the whole of 
that civilization upside down, and the adjustment of 
the new lines of politics in England is simply on this 



372 JUSTICE, DIVINE AND HUMAN. 

side or that of the line of justice to Ireland. Take 
your questions, then, out of politics and make them 
questions of justice. Take your little questions out of 
narrow conceptions, and hring them to the test of 
justice : "Am I doing to my neighbor what I would 
like to have my neighbor do to me ? " If I am not, I 
am taking part with injustice; and for every dollar 
I get that is taken from a man, which has not been 
fairly earned, I will have to pay, and society will have- 
to pay, with sorrow and tears, for " the judgments oi 
God are true and righteous altogether." 



THE LIGHT THAT IS IN" THEE. 



THE LIGHT THAT IS IN THEE. 



The light of the body is the eye; if therefore thine eye be single, 
thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy 
whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is 
in thee be darkness, how great is that dar'kness ! ' ' 

Matt, vi, 22, 23. 



' ' Z am the light of the world ; he that folloiveth me shall not walk 
in darkness, but shall have the light of life." 

John viii, 12. 

HAT a fine eye for nature Jesus had. What 
1 a close observation of things that were going 
^ ° on in nature ; and what an accurate percep- 
tion of their use and their place. How unerringly he 
traces the analogy between the material and the spirit- 
ual birth. I think it is Ruskin who calls attention to 
the fact that landscape art, which is after all the high- 
est form of art, is peculiarly christian ; that it has de- 
veloped within christian times and particularly within 
later christian times a fine feeling of the spiritual qual- 
ity of nature, the heart that is in it, the joy that ani- 
mates it. This feeling for nature, this sense of its in- 
ner meaning, this detection of the subtle lines of re- 
lation that have bound one thing to another, character- 
izes Jesus. 




376 THE LIGHT THAT IS IN THEE. 

In the first text which I have chosen, there is a case 
in point. He uses the words Light and Eye in an accu- 
rate way, in a scientifically truthful way ; and then he 
traces the analogy between the sight physical and the 
sight spiritual in a way that is profitable as well as in- 
teresting. Light, Milton calls, "heaven's first horn." 
"And God said, Let there he light," and light as a 
mantle fell over the sea. The light is that of which a 
little infant is first conscious, and feebly feels out 
toward. It is the first object of men's worship. All 
the great nations have worshipped the sun, so splendid 
in its going forth and so royal in its setting, the fertile 
originator of all life, covering eve^ hill and valley 
with food for the use of man. The gratitude of man 
has always recognized this connection between the 
food he ate and the sun that shone above him, and he 
worshipped the sun. To select this great central lumin- 
ary, the source of light and the source of life, and to 
offer it sacrifices and to bow down to it in prayer was 
not ignoble. 

Between light and the eye, there is of course a very 
subtle connection. We know the eye can not see with- 
out light ; but what we do not know is that the eye is 
born of the light, that it is the light and only the light 
that has made our eyes. The eye is only a nerve fila- 
ment expanded. It is by the irritation of this nerve 
filament that increased sensitiveness has grown. There 
are things so feeble and so low in the scale of being 
that there is nothing we may call an eye, but simply a 
little nervous susceptibility to the differences between 
light and darkness. This is the germ of the eye, and 
up through infinite ages and on through infinite 
changes, G-od has developed from the little point of a 
nerve this marvelously complex and delicate thing that 
we call an eye. The e}^e that we have, with all its 
power and all its range, is nothing more than a nerve 



THE LIGHT THAT IS IN THEE. 377 

» 

set apart to a special use which has been awakened and 
developed into life by the constant striking upon it as 
of a thousand tiny hammers of the vibrations of that 
medium which gives us light. And now, these thousand 
tiny hammer-strokes upon this little nerve filament, 
are sifted, combined, compared and broken by the 
mind that is behind until we recognize form, shape, 
color and quality. It is the mind that distinguishes; it 
is the mind that compares. All that the eye does is 
simply to receive these impressions upon it and they 
tremble and thrill until, as by sound as well as by 
touch, the fine telegrapher recognizes the word and 
the thought ; so the mind, by these tiny strokes of dif- 
ferent lengths and values, distinguishes red from blue, 
round from square, and knows these things by the com- 
binations of its senses. If thine eye be perfect, said 
Jesus, thy whole body shall be full of light ; but if thine 
eye be imperfect, thy body is full of darkness. We all 
of us have the sense of sight but in differing perfec- 
tion. Not all have perfect vision. Some are color- 
blind ; some have varying lengths of sight. There is a 
vast difference between the range of sight of an Indian 
on the plains and a student trying to read German text. 
There is an immense difference between the exact eye 
that can detect all the varying shades of color in silks 
and that which simply recognizes two of the primary 
colors. Few have perfect sight, but when we have it 
what a wealth of things is open to us, what treasures 
the memory has, what a pleasure it is to live. 

The eye is recognized as the organ of the noblest 
sense. The ear stands related to the emotional life, the 
feeling; and the eye to the intellectual life. It is by 
means of seeing that the intellectual life is kindled. 
It is by means of hearing that the finer emotional life 
is awakened. The deprivation of sight has always 
been looked upon as one of the greatest of afflictions ; 



378 THE LIGHT THAT IS IN THEE. 

• 

hence the moan that Milton puts into the mouth of 
Samson, "Dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, 
irrecoverably dark." That is the cry of many a one. 
A person who has never seen may not know what the 
deprivation means ; but a person who has once seen 
and can no longer see, who, through forms and shapes 
of things, goes stumbling on his perilous way, may, 
indeed, look upon himself as deprived of God's primal 
gift and man's noblest sense. 

With this recognition of the fine, accurate, scientific 
use which Jesus is making of light and the eye, you 
are prepared to take the next step, and see how he 
traces the analogy between the eye physical, which 
looks out over the world material, and the vision spir- 
itual, which looks into the world unseen. For he in- 
tends us to know that just as we have an eye that sees 
things that are about us, measuring their shapes and 
determining their forms and qualities, so we have a 
vision within us, which, looking into the world in 
which we live and move and have our being, the un- 
seen world, puts us into relation with that ; and he 
says, " therefore, if the light that is in thee be dark- 
ness, how great is that darkness." 

Each of us has a certain spiritual vision that is part 
of the rich endowment of human nature. It has always 
been recognized as the power of a few among the old 
Celtic tribes of the north of Ireland and Scotland. The 
seer or the man of vision has had his place — so the 
prophet or the fore-seer in all the nations everywhere ; 
and these men have told their stories, voiced their 
thoughts and convictions and related their visions, and 
they become the sacred scriptures of the nations. These 
men were called holy men of God, and it is said that of 
old holy men of God spake as they were moved by the 
Holy Spirit. We can not believe that this power of in- 
sight is given to a few. We are taught and believe 



THE LIGHT THAT IS IN THEE. 379 

that God is no respecter of persons. He does not dis- 
tinguish this one from that one in anything that is es- 
sential to life. Each of us has the complement of 
faculty and of sense, and each of us has the same kind,, 
if not the same degree of power. Therefore, we can 
well understand these words of the old prophet. He 
denies that he himself has any special power or priv- 
ilege. He says that " It shall come to pass afterward 
that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, your sons 
and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall 
dream dreams, your young men shall see visions, and 
also upon the servants and upon the hand-maids will I 
pour out my spirit." 

This is but to say that the spiritual faculty is some- 
thing that belongs to humanity as a whole and not to 
individuals. And therefore it is not strange if in these 
later days the expressions of this spiritual power should 
no longer be limited. We no longer say that holy men 
of old spake as they were inspired by the Holy Spirit ;. 
but that every one has a power of spiritual impression 
according to the degree of development of the spiritual 
faculty or the depth of the spiritual insight; and that 
whatever is said by virtue of this insight and this fac- 
ulty has in it just so much of truth as this faculty has 
been able to discover. 

Therefore, we have enlarged our Bibles, we have 
claimed, and assert, that inspiration is something not 
confined to a few, but something that belongs to the 
world; that the Bible can never be closed, that the 
Bible Dever belonged to the Jews alone, but every nation 
has had its sacred writings, the utterances of its worthi- 
est, its deep-sighted men and women. Practically, we 
are all using these inspired utterances of many men. If 
I should ask you, what is your Bible, you might take up 
for me this book. If I should ask you, is that all that 
you use in your daily life to light your hope, to renew 



380 THE LIGHT THAT IS IN THEE. 

jour courage, to soothe your discomfort, to quiet your 
pain, to voice your joy, to expand your life, to enlarge 
your sympathy, to teach you duty ? Oh, no, you would 
isay ; I have learned much from Whittier ; Shakespeare 
has taught me much ; great words come sounding down 
through Dante ; and wise insight from Goethe. You 
say practically I am using the words and thoughts of 
•all wise men through all ages and over all eras, to guide, 
direct, comfort, and strengthen me. True, that is your 
practical daily Bible. That is your inspired word, that 
is your word of insight. These great, wise, holy men, are 
not of old, nor of Judea alone, hut of Judea, Germany, 
England, Italy and America. These men speak as they 
are breathed upon by the Infinite Mind and see as they 
have the power to see ; and understand as they have the 
power to understand. 

Therefore, it is only by degree of development of 
the light that is within us that men see ; not that a few 
see and many are blind, any more than that eyes are 
given to a few and not to all. For, just as we have 
•eyes as the complement of senses, so we have the spir- 
itual vision, each of us, all of us, and the use and 
development of it lies entirely with ourselves. Says 
John, there was the light that lighteth every man 
that cometh into the world. Now, there is this to un- 
derstand: this spiritual vision or faculty which is 
within us, comes into life by light. All the develop - 
, ment of the eye from its lowest form of sensitive nerve- 
filament to its highest complexity in bee or in wasp, is 
simply a development through use ; so much of light 
as any one has had has been worked up into life by use. 
And, therefore, Jesus says, with wonderful accuracy 
and truth, if any man will follow me he shall not walk 
in darkness but shall have the light of life. 

The light of life. That is a very beautiful, as it is a 
very accurate phrase. The light that is worked up by 



THE LIGHT THAT IS IN THEE. 381 

living and the life that is the result of the light. The 
development of all this spiritual faculty which we have 
in little or in large is simply by using it day by day. It 
is by using that we gain the power of sight ; it is by 
listening that we learn accurately to distinguish between 
varying tones ; it is by touching that we learn to distin- 
guish between things rough and smooth ; it is by seeing 
God that we learn to see more of God. It is by taking 
the wisdom that we have to-day and using it in life 
that we have more wisdom for to-morrow's work. Life 
and light ; they intermingle and they correlate. They 
pass from one to the other. Light is made into life 
always. Therefore, it becomes a most beautiful illus- 
tration of the power of self-illumination. And that is 
why this word of Jesus rings again its changes, " The 
light that is in thee." 

A beautiful nature-illustration of this is in the family 
of the beetle of which our fire-fly is one. . Now, feeble 
as this fire-fly is, slow of motion and dull of sense, so 
that the little child can reach it and catch it, it has this 
rare power of shining by some inward light. They are 
very feeble folk, but the strong grasp of nineteenth cen- 
tury science has not yet been able to draw the secret from 
this feeble thing, of how he lights his light. Light, with 
us, when it is worked up through life, becomes the means 
of self-illumination, but the light that is in us, in a certain 
sense finding its illustration in this light of the glow- 
worm or of the fire-fly, is a self-illuminating power. It 
is done by working up the simple, primal virtues in 
life, of truth and justice and kindness. They are the 
component parts of spiritual life, and as we break up 
natural light into its seven colors, we break up spiritual 
light into its three qualities, of truth and justice and 
kindness. Now, these are known everywhere in crude 
or in refined forms. The savage knows them and the 
cultivated man knows them ; and their quality no more 



382 THE LIGHT THAT IS IN THEE. 

changes than the quality of the water varies which may 
be drunk from the lip of Himalaya or taken from any 
bubbling spring in Indiana. 

Truth, justice and kindness ; these are the component 
parts of the spiritual light to work up into daily life ; 
and by speaking the best we know, by doing that which 
is just and being kind, the primal light becomes within 
us a means of self-illumination, which throws light as 
we walk just a little ahead of us into the dark or into 
the sorrowful places of life. 

ISTow, this self-illumination is a very important thing, 
because men have been walking in the light, or trying 
to walk in the light of great men's shining for so many 
years. All over the world, some great torch-bearer has 
held aloft his light, which perhaps was given him for 
himself, and a little for others, and men have been try- 
ing to walk by his light. But every man's path in life 
is his own. There is no great highway along which 
myriads walk from birth through death into the life 
that is beyond. So far as each of us is concerned, we 
have to thread our way absolutely alone through this 
world, as through an apparently trackless forest ; and 
there are mysterious and doleful noises, dreadful 
shapes, dark shadows, impenetrable darknesses, and 
no man's light avails much for another. It will help, 
but each man must himself light his own way. We 
carry our inner light and the life we get in the light 
helps us to walk through the shadows. But if one 
throws aside his light he can not walk by any other 
man's ; or if one conceals his light and neglects it, he 
can not walk by any other man's. Jesus was the light 
of the world, but no man can walk by his light alone, 
unless he has penetrated to the same source of light 
and has the same light within him that Jesus had. 

The world has been trying to walk for ages by the 
light of Socrates, and by the light of Calvin, and by 



THE LIGHT THAT IS IN THEE. 383 

the light of many another great name; and it is stumb- 
ling to-day because it does not know that no man can 
walk by another's light. The light that is within us is 
ours personally to use as the path that stretches before 
us is our path and no other man's path. You can not 
walk with your friend hand in hand a long distance ; 
there are obstructions and there are obtrusions, and 
there are divergent ways, and there are differences of 
opinion and diversities of view. Close as we walk, 
with clasped hands, no less we walk apart, and each 
of us takes his own way through life lighted by the 
light that is within him. 

The uses of great lights in the world, of great names, 
I shall speak of in a moment in closing, but it is enough 
for us to remember that God meant each of us to light 
our lives by our own light ; and the light that is within 
us is simply working up into life for daily uses the 
simple primitive qualities of life, truth and justice and 
kindness. Dark as this world is, and dark as are the 
shadows that hang over the future, it becomes lumin- 
ous to any one who tries to live by his truth and his 
justice and his kindness. ~No man who spoke sincerely, 
who acted justly, and who dealt kindly and lovingly 
with men, ever stumbled in this world. Light enough 
at all times was given, with a little patient waiting, to 
know what to do next and where to go, and he has 
come to God's house in peace, following the light that 
is within him. 

But no man can or ought to keep the light that is 
within him to himself. While it does not shine far out, 
yet it does reveal the quality and the beauty of the 
things which are in ourselves, and therefore Jesus 
says, again with wonderful accuracy : " Let your light 
so shine before men that they may see your good works 
and glorify your father which is in heaven." He who 
has lived in his own light, tried to live sincerely and 



384 THE LIGHT THAT IS IN THEE. 

justly and kindly, makes very beautiful these virtues. 
He holds them up and shows that they are not abstract 
qualities, but qualities held in human use, and therefore 
men are drawn to see the value of the things that 
are in themselves and to walk by the light that they 
have. And the use of Jesus Christ to us, as the light 
of the world, is to show us how luminous may be that 
man's life who lives by truth, justice, and love in the 
world ; how attractive are the moral qualities, how 
deep the range of spiritual vision, how kindly the acts r 
how grateful the recognition. We live and walk in 
the light of him in this sense, that doing the things that 
he did, attending to the words that he said, we, too, 
possess the same quality of light, even if we do not gain 
its quantity ; we are in the line of the development of 
spiritual vision, if we can not see as far or look as deep ;. 
but the same component parts that made his life lumin- 
ous make our lives luminous also. 

It is not for us to forget great men and great names.. 
They lighted the darkness about them ; they brought 
into relief some great thought of God, as when at 
night a star comes out in the heavens that were black 
but now have a faint trembling light, and one star 
comes after another, until at last the whole heavenly 
blue is gemmed with these lights ; so as man after man- 
comes out from God the darkness of the unseen world- 
becomes visible; the beauty of moral qualities is seen, 
a new word of God trembles and enters into the lan- 
guage of men ; and by and by, as we read history, it is 
like reading the stars at night by some great astrono- 
mer, to whom they are not merely light points, but 
great, teeming worlds. Other men come forth from God, 
sincere in utterance, just in their dealing, kindly, loving 
and gracious in their manner, and every one of them' 
adds some new meaning and lights up a little more the 



THE LIGHT THAT IS IX THEE. 385 

darkness which lies about us. The world is very beau- 
tiful because of these lights which men have left behind 
them. 

Differing though we do in some minute things, each 
of us, after all, spells out the same ultimate word. The 
light from every star, when analyzed by the spectro- 
scope, shows the same chemical constituents. We 
know that in the sun is iron and gold and all the min- 
erals which are in this earth. We know that in Xep- 
tune are the same constituent elements that are here ; 
and that there is not a star so remote, even though its 
light takes ten thousand years to reach us, but that its 
rays passing through the spectroscope show the same 
component elements in its chemical structure. And as 
man after man, sincere in his word and just in his deal- 
ing and gracious in his manner, comes into this world, 
a great soul of God, and lives according to the light 
that is within him, the light of his life, when analyzed 
by us, is always found to be the same thing — love. Then 
we know that God is love, and the universe is love and 
that all is love, and all is law, and the law of the uni- 
verse is the law of love. 



25 



THE REVELATIONS OF DEATH. 



388 THE REVELATIONS OF DEATH. 



To thee we come in joy and in sorrow, in light and 
in darkness. We come to thee, thou who art closer 
than our breathing. We try to understand thee, but 
we can not. We magnify the qualities and the powers 
of our own lives until they seem to fill the large spaces 
in this universe, and then try to think that thou art 
like ourselves ; and yet we know that thou hast much 
more of power and goodness and faculty. Our few senses 
grope out toward that which is above us ; but in the in- 
finite mists of thy creation, vasts things pass by us un- 
heeded by the eye or ear or hand. Thou hast infinitely 
more to reveal to the soul of man than its complement 
of sense and endowment of faculty make possible. 

From the great sun stream rays which are too fine 
to enter the eye; from the orbs, as they pass with 
the motion of hurrying atoms, sounds come, so low 
we can not hear them, so fine and musical we can 
not trace them. On every hand there are signs which 
give dim hint and mysterious suggestion of things un- 
speakable and unknowable ; we are embosomed in mys- 
tery. We can not understand our own lives, why we 
lift the hand and why we speak the word. The con- 
nection between brain and thought, and between heart 
and love, no one can tell; but this we know, that all 
about us is wonderful mystery, steeped in the light 
that never was on sea or land, and that in this Presence 
we live and move and have our being. All that we 
know comes out of the mysterious center of thought, 
all that we love comes from the mysterious source of 
love. The love that envelops the little child that lies in 
our arms, is the same thing that makes planet draw to- 
ward planet, holding each in balanced harmony, as they 



THE REVELATIONS OF DEATH. 389 

take their ways through the spaces of the stars, and all is 
God and all is good. We come into this world through 
the gate of birth, and we disappear through the gate of 
death. The portals close behind the little one that 
comes in, and they shut so quickly when one goes out, 
that we can not catch a glimpse of what is beyond. 
Through one door a man enters this world, and through 
another he leaves it. He lives his little life here, it 
is but a moment in the great eternity, a moment of 
struggle, sorrow, joy, mystery, despair, hate and an^er; 
he is like a bird that comes into a lighted room and goes 
out again into the dark. Whence it comes or whither 
it goes, no one can tell; but we know we come from 
God ; our memories tell us that, our home longings, the 
heavenly home-sickness, the dim reminiscences, the 
questioning fancies, the desires that are not satisfied, 
everything tells us we come from far and come from on 
high. 

As we look forward, expanding powers break against 
the bars of this prison-house and tell us this is not all. 
Little children come to us, grow to manhood and wo- 
manhood, do the part of men and women, and then 
disappear; but no one has ever yet been satisfied. 
They come with a look of wonder, and go out with a 
look of question, longing and desire, and the heart 
is the home of hunger and longing. And so our life 
here seems to us, and must seem to us as but a thing 
of to-day, while the infinite now of God stretches about 
it, as the ocean around some little isle. 

Our lives lie in the infinitude of God, and we only 
know this, we come from God and we go to him. We 
rest here for a little while to do our duty, the thing 
that lies next to us, to speak the truth, love mercy and 
walk humbly, and this is all. When we go with these 
qualities which have become a part and parcel of the 
structure of the soul, we go without anxiety, falling 



390 THE REVELATIONS OF DEATH. 

asleep as Jesus did. Other than this attaineth no man. 
Our schemes and systems and philosophies satisfy only 
the childishness of man, but they do not satisfy the 
depths of his consciousness. And so we rest in this : 
It is good to live where God is ; here and now and 
everywhere his love is, and they who disappear from us 
are only lost to sight, even as at bed-time we say good 
night. They close the door of the chamber, but we 
know they will bid us good morning. Good morn- 
ing, we say to those who come, welcome to the beau- 
tiful world. Help us to make it better and more 
beautiful. Good night, we say to them, good night 
and pleasant dreams. When we die, we are told we* 
shall not lose our sleep, but shall only have lost those 
dreams which troubled sleep, and God shall say, good 
morning. So let our lives be hid in thee, until the lit- 
tle changes which we call sleep or death, not knowing 
which is which, shall have disappeared. 

"We sleep on without fear and without care, to be- 
come that which we may become, to do that which 
thou hast for us to do. .Now, let comfort come to 
all that are troubled, strength to the weak, and glad- 
ness to all ; music and happiness to the lives of little 
children, success to strong men, peaceful, ordered 
homes to everybody, and hope, comfort and happy 
home life, through the freedom and through the spir- 
itual enfranchisement of Jesus Christ, our Lord. 



THE REVELATIONS OF DEATH. 



' ' And David said, while the child ivas yet alive, I fasted and wept : 
for I said, Who can tell whether God will be gracious to me, that the 
child may live f Bui now that he is dead, wherefore should I fast ? Can 
I bring him bach again t I shall go to him, but he shall not return to 



me" 



II. Samuel, xii, 22, 23. 



O^HERE are times when we can not talk of death 
%Q calmly and quietly ; when across the surface of 

cT^ our li yes a strong wind is blowing; as when a 
friend, a child, is taken from us — we can not then 
calmly estimate the meaning of what we call death. 
But at this time I take the occasion to consider this 
subject of death as quietly, and strongly, as I may. And 
remembering how many of you who are here have been 
called upon recently to give back to God those who 
once came out from him into this earth, I am minded 
to try to interpret as far as one may the mystery of 
this matter of death. 

Now, I want you to see first, how the use and 
wont of life resumes its place ; how the king arises from 
his fasting, washes and anoints himself, goes to the 
house of God for worship, returns to his own abode, 
has food set before him, and thence goes out to the hall 
of Justice where he hears the daily causes which men 
bring to him, and administers the affairs of state. With 
the shadow of his great grief yet upon him, the usual 



392 THE REVELATIONS OF DEATH. 

duties of life are taken up. The child was dead ; that 
which was feared had come to pass ; the uncertainty 
had lost itself in certainty; the child can not return 
to him. But life is here with its insistent duties — the 
cares of the world and its business, large and small; 
its business of eating and drinking, and its business 
of hearing and determining causes of justice and affairs 
of state. Into the very privacy of his personal grief, 
then, the great world comes, like an intruder, with a 
message on its lips or a letter in its hand, and says, 
this, too, must be attended to. What answer will you 
give? The use and wont of life, its daily business 
which has gone on, even while the little child was sick, 
now comes again to assert its place. The living are 
here with their needs and with their questions and 
with their sorrows, and they, too, have a claim upon 
the heart. 

Your first-born is dead. It has been lying in all its 
silent majesty in a room by itself. The friends have 
gathered. The usual delightful litter of the house, the 
books, papers, sewing, playthings, are all out of sight. 
Certain rooms are made ready for this company that is 
to come. An unusual stillness and form and dreadful 
order obtains. Then comes the service, and then the 
cortege, the passage to the grave. Some friend re- 
mains behind to restore the room and the home to its 
old-time look. They scatter things again. From their 
formal order the chairs are brought back into a disor- 
der of comfort and convenience. The table is put in 
the center again, and on it are the books and papers 
of daily use. We come back again, and sit down and 
wait. No one says anything. It is evening now. 
How strange it seems in the presence of this great grief 
to sit down to the common table, and begin life again 
together as a family. There had been an irregu- 
larity of meal during the illness. People got their food 



THE REVELATIONS OF DEATH. 393 

as they could. Friends had come from the train and 
friends were going at different hours. But now life is 
taken up almost as if nothing had happened, and family 
customs are resumed. In the morning the man, a little 
later than usual, will go to his work. His business has 
piled up during this interregnum. His letters have 
'been unanswered. He hesitates about taking them up, 
but he does. His clerks come to him with their ques- 
tions, and friends drop in, with hush and silence and 
consideration, but still with the needed question and 
asking the needed help. And he goes back to dinner 
earlier and comes back a little later than usual. But 
business is there — the things of common, daily life. 
In the meantime, his wife in her home has taken up 
life again. The confusion of the long sickness must be 
repaired, things restored to their daily order. Here are 
the daily duties to be done ; thrice each day food is to 
be prepared. The things of the household are to be 
administered in comfort ; and so she takes up her life 
work. Friends come in the evening to sympathize; 
and the silence and reticence is broken after a time and 
they talk more and more familiarly about the life that 
is gone, and about the things that remain. But after 
a while, there is a certain appropriation of this pain ; 
there has become a certain habit of bearing it ; it is not 
talked about so much ; it recedes into the deeper parts 
of the nature. The man now goes to his business as 
usual and the woman to her duties ; the insistent world 
continually brings a thousand things to do, from the 
servant who asks what you will order for dinner, to 
the clerk who asks what shall be done with this letter. 
The demands of life are asserting themselves. The 
grief becomes a memory, a glorified memory, with the 
face never changing, always the same, upon which time 
has no effect to make it old, and care has no power to 



394 THE REVELATIONS OF DEATH. 

draw lines; always held just as when the last look 
lingered upon it. It is not forgotten. It has become 
an influence in the life; and that which was good 
about it is lifted up more and more, and into more 
striking outlines come the great characteristics of love, 
hope, truth, thought, and fidelity — the things we love to 
remember. They come out into sharper relief and 
bolder outline, and we understand better the one that is 
gone ; the great lines on which God has laid this life in 
his planning, now so seemingly frustrated. And so 
this goes further and further back into the years. It is 
never as if it were not. We acquire a certain habit of 
bearing pain and a power of adjustment to the loss ; 
but the world is necessarily with us and the things of 
the living are more important than brooding, and 
grieving, and sorrowing for the dead. 

Another scripture word : " One generation passeth 
away and another generation cometh; but the earth 
abideth forever." The generations pass. What is true 
of the individual in this sense of loss and the adjustment 
of life of which I have spoken is true of the great world 
This city has lately lost a good man, Iiobert Browning 
— everybody's friend, a kind, just, faithful, true man. 
We have lost others from our own circle here, helpful, 
strong, earnest men, and friends stopped their business 
and attended the funeral. Many and many a business 
man, with large affairs pressing upon him, has put them 
aside to pay this tribute of respect to a fellow business 
man. But after it was over, they went back to their 
business, the banker to his desk, the physician to his 
practice, the lawyer to his cases, the business man to 
his work. The great stream of commerce, industry, 
law, and medicine all went on again. 

Secretarv Windom is dead. For a time it startled 
the people, but after all, the next question is, who shall 



THE REVELATIONS OF DEATH. 395 

now be the secretary of the treasury? It is not insen- 
sitiveness, it is not indifference, hut is simply the con- 
sciousness of men that the great business of the govern- 
ment, the care of the living, the adjustment of finances, 
is a matter of more immediate concern. I have heard 
a bird singing while I have been praying or reading the 
scriptures at funerals. The bird took no note of what 
was going on. This was its mistress who fed it day by 
day. He pours now into the silent air his flood of 
melody. As we have gone along the street, the world 
moved on the same way. Loaded teams passed us, 
children played in the street, we heard the click of the 
hammer, the whistle of the locomotive, and the heavy 
boom of the roaring train. Life went on, as if nothing- 
had happened, and hearts were breaking all the while. 
Things went on — the use and wont of the daily busi- 
ness of life. 

As we walk through life, part of an innumerable 
company that make up what we call a generation, one 
after another drops out. Here was a little child that 
held somebody's hand; here was a baby cradled in a 
mother's bosom; here was a boy, his springing step 
suddenly halted; a graceful girl who dies with the 
bloom of youth upon her ; a strong man to whom we en- 
trusted our affairs ; a great statesman dealing with 
questions of government — one after another we miss 
the elbow-touch of our fellows. They are not with us. 
God has taken them. And the silent city on the hill 
grows more and more populous. That which twenty 
years ago perhaps had hardly one denizen, now is cov 
ered with the low, green tents, whose curtains never 
outward swing. The thousands who are there to-day 
shall be tens of thousands when this century closes. 

If only it were possible to stand where the gates ox 
life and death open, where the innumerable company 
that are entering earth through one gate and those that 



396 THE REVELATIONS OF DEATH. 

are going out through another gate, could pass before 
our eyes, what a sight it would be ! The immense im- 
agination of Plato conceived such a scene. Suppose 
we stand at the gate of life where, first in the form of 
little children, a vast company that no man can num- 
ber, every day and every hour are entering this world, 
born into its varied conditions ; here the son of a prince, 
and there the son of a pauper, entering side by side, 
but to what different fortunes, what varying condi- 
tions. All alike at the same age, the same moment 
are entering the gate that we call birth into life. And 
then, leaving this innumerable company, let us stand 
where another company, as numberless, is passing out 
of life, only here are different ages and different con- 
ditions. Little babes are here, with the look of won- 
der still in their eyes which they brought from heaven; 
and here are boys and girls who have left behind them 
playmate and home ; and young mothers casting back- 
ward glances toward the little ones that are left un- 
mothered; and strong men, agonized at thinking of 
the dependence of those that are now left unhusbanded 
and unfathered; the strong, alert and able, leaving 
their affairs ; and the old and broken, the gaunt, the 
withered, the toil-smitten and the disappointed, all 
coming out at one time. How many each moment go 
through the gate and disappear ! That would be a 
wonderful sight ; what an appeal to the human imagin- 
ation ! One company moving towards the gate of life, 
and the other passing through the gate of death. 

When in the house of Walt Whitman a life had gone 
out and the stillness and silence and hush were there, a 
little child crept in through the half-open door where 
the old poet was sitting and meditating, and looked 
into the face of the one that was lying there. He drew 
the child kindly to him and said, " You do not under- 
stand it, do you, dear ? No ; none of us understands it. 



THE REVELATIONS OF DEATH. 397 

We do not understand what it is to be born, either.' 7 
On this Mary Mapes Dodge has written a little poem 
called 

THE TWO MYSTERIES. 

We kDow not what it is, dear, this sleep so deep and still ; 
The folded hands, the awful calm, the cheek so pale and chill ; 
The lids that will not lift again, though we may call and call ; 
The strange, white solitude of peace that settles over all. 

We know not what it means, dear, this desolate heart-pain — 
The dread to take our daily way, and walk in it again. 
We know not to what sphere the loved who leave us go ; 
Nor why we're left to wander still ; nor why we do not know. 

But this we know; our loved and dead, if they should come 

this day — 
Should come and ask us, What is life ? not one of us could say. 
Life is a mystery as deep as death can ever he ; 
Yet, oh, how sweet it is to us, this life we live and see. 

Then might they say — those vanished ones — and blessed is the 

thought — 
So death is sweet to us, beloved, though we may tell you 

naught : 
We may not tell it to the quick — this mystery of death — 
Ye may not tell us, if ye would, the mystery of breath. 

The child that enters life comes not with knowledge or intent, 
So those who enter death must go as little children sent. 
Nothing is known. But I believe that God is overhead ; 
And as life is to the living, so death is to the dead. 

The world goes on. Its vast concerns are not dis- 
turbed by the loss of one or another. You remember 
when a few years since there disappeared from the bar 



398 THE REVELATIONS OF DEATH. 

of this city one after another many illustrious names — 
Conrad Baker, Thomas A. Hendricks, Oscar B. Hord, 
Abram Hendricks, and others. Business went on, the 
undisturbed affairs of justice, even as if these men had 
never been here, it would seem. The business of a 
great railroad or of a great commercial enterprise goes 
on. The king is dying; he is drawing the last breath; 
one steps out on a little balcony and says : " The king 
is dead ; long live the king !" And it would almost 
seem as if some herald is saying, " One is dead ; all hail 
him who is born ! " For the great undisturbed affairs of 
nature and of life go on. One generation passeth away ; 
another generation cometh ; but the earth and the things 
of the earth go on forever. 

And now what shall we say of this thing, this seem- 
ing indifference to our personal grief, this intrusion of 
daily concern into the privacy of personal sorrow. 
Alas! and are we then so soon forgot? Does it make 
no more difference than when one dips a cup into the 
great ocean which shows nothing whatever of any loss ? 
When one fells a tree in the forest it is quickly re- 
placed by up-growing trees. Is all this heartless and 
indifferent ? Has nature no kindness and God no pity ? 
Is there no space of time allowed? May we not go to 
the grave and weep there, like Mary of Magdala— or is 
there a deeper meaning than that? Does death, then, 
so belong to the nature of things — is it, then, such a 
part of life that it is not an accident, but an incident ? 
Does nature go on undisturbed because it does not 
frighten her, or trouble her, or confuse her ? Is death, 
then, provided for in the great conception of God and 
time in such a way that the use and wont of life may, 
indeed, go on untroubled? I propose, as I ask this 
question, to lead you, step by step, a little into it, that 
by its suggestion, it may wake the deep echoes of long 
buried thoughts in your minds. 



THE REVELATIONS OF DEATH. 399 

What is the nature of things ? It is the whole order 
of this universe. It comprehends everything, in whole 
and in part, every law and the action of every law. 
The drop of water, with its teeming life, the drop of 
blood, loaded with its destructive agencies that make 
for death, the vast mountains and the immense roam- 
ing herds of deer and cattle, the lonely lurking tiger, 
the springing herb, all are parts of the nature of things ; 
all are balanced, all are in harmony, all are working 
smoothly without confusion and God's plan includes 
all, and moves along in undisturbed affairs. The 
minute floating insect in the air, fed by God promptly 
and our little children fed by him, and the tiger's cub 
fed by him, too— all these are parts of the nature of 
things. Now, if this is so, this nature of things, in 
which all things have their place and use, why then, 
use and wont must needs always go on. How can 
God's affairs be disturbed, as one after another disap- 
pears ? He buries his workmen but he carries on their 
work. The affairs of the Treasury are not for one 
second confused by the instant death of its Secre- 
tary. The affairs go on, and must go on. Too many 
things depend on them for God to posit all things on 
one. Death has a place among the facts, forces, and 
laws of life. You remember the story of the cruci- 
fixion, how the sun was darkened for the space of six 
hours, and the earth shook and the graves opened, and 
bodies of those that were there arose and walked. A 
life was going out which had breathed itself so into the 
very frame of the world that a new impulse was given 
to it. This, too, belonged to the nature of things. The 
earth opened her bosom to take her son back again, but 
will keep his memory green and adopt his life so into 
the nature of things that every remote man that ever 
lives shall bless the name of Jesus of Nazareth. The 



400 THE REVELATIONS OF DEATH. 

shadows in the Hartz Mountains which a man himself 
casts seem to him great giants which threaten him. It 
is only when life has passed away, that we realize we 
cast our own shadows and out of our own shadows 
make our own fears. 

The old theology said death entered the world hy sin, 
and my own imagination is still imprinted with the 
picture of a lurking skeleton hiding behind the tree 
when Eve takes the apple and hands it to Adam. I 
count it one of the greatest gifts of science in showing 
that death and sin have no immediate connection ; that 
death reigned in this world millions of years before 
man ever trod it. This is seen in the fossil remains 
which are entombed in the earth. Death is part of 
the nature of things and only gets its pain and misery 
through sin ; but not its fact. There is a law of death, 
as there is a law of life. There is a certain cycle of 
change through which every thing passes. The ephem- 
era have their day, the man his seventy years, the cen- 
tury plant its hundred, and the star its eon ; but all life 
is swung into the universe to by-and-by disappear from 
it and be worked up into its elements and into new 
forms under the molding touch of the spirit of God. 
So each animal quietly withdraws to die. You can not 
rind a dead animal in the woods. They have gone into 
some hollow tree or cave or deep recess, there quietly 
to breathe out their existence, when their cycle closes. 
When the first night came, what a fear it must have 
brought with it. The sun is gone, lengthening shad- 
ows come, doleful sounds and moans are heard, demons 
and sprites are playing, fears creep over the minds of 
men ; then sleep comes and enfolds one. It is death's 
twin brother. Says Hood, of his little dying child : 



THE REVELATIONS OF DEATH. 401 

" We watched her breathing through the night — 
Her breathing soft and low — 
As quietly the pulse of life 
Kept heaving to and fro. 
Our weary hopes belied our fears, 
Our fears our hopes belied — 
We thought her dying when she slept, 
And sleeping when she died." 

So the changes which we are unconscious of are only 
other names for death. Lifting this hand has made the 
death of how many parts of me ? In this sermon I am 
preaching to you a million, million parts of me are 
dying, and will be caught up by currents of the body 
and shall disappear. We die daily, but it is only when 
this becomes visible and known to us, in touch and eye 
and ear, that at last we see that we have died com- 
pletely, all in all. 

Now, I have never known any one who was afraid 
to die — so much a part of the nature of things is it; no 
one, bad or good, was afraid to die, and physicians of 
large experience verify this. When death comes, there 
is no fear, it seems so much a part of the nature of 
things, a sort of release. The account has been given 
of one perishing of cold in the Arctic, who regretted 
that he was being brought back to life, it was such a 
sweet thing to die. And Hunter, the great physician, 
when he was dying, said, Is this all of it? The Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury said, "I thought I should have 
been afraid to die." To die is part of the nature of 
things. It is comprehended in life. It is only one of 
the changes that come. 

I want to bring here some thoughts that may come 
in future to give strength to me or to those who listen. 
Sometimes I think we are becoming cowards with our 
dread of death. Science is showing us now in the 
drops of water and food we eat a million threatening 

26 



402 THE REVELATIONS OF DEATH. 

forces. Oh, should a man with God's splendid purpose 
in his eyes and belief in his great order crouch and 
cower in the presence of this thought ! 

One shall be taken and another left. We can not 
tell. We can not foresee it. We can not prevent it. 
So it rests upon us. There it is, the great mystery. 
What better can we say than the Arab, " I must sub- 
mit ; " or the Persian, "On two days it steads not to 
run from thy grave, the appointed and the unappointed 
day. On the first, neither balm nor physician can save ; 
nor thee on the second the universe slay." 

We should love life. It is a trust. The Creator made 
it an instinct to love it. As long as he pleases we must 
defend it. Our right arm is so arranged that it defends 
our heart, the vital part. The instinct of life is good ; 
we are entitled to our seventy years. The physician 
must give us our seventy years. Our little children 
must not prematurely die. This wasted force and prom- 
ise of life must be saved. But when all is said and 
death comes, let us at least meet it with the dignity of 
men, and say, this is not unanticipated and not un- 
ordered. It is a part of the nature of things. 

And when death comes, oh friends, what a revelation 
it makes. Here is no common messenger. It comes 
in state and dignity and majesty and clothed with 
power. As it utters God's Nunc Dimittis to our spirits, 
we feel as if a great presence is here. There is an ab- 
sence of vulgarity and commonness. The commonest 
clay takes on beauty and grace in death. There is a 
quiet in the face, as if rest had come. There is a mys- 
terious look upon it, as if now indeed the long quest 
were ended and some at least of the mysteries were 
solved. Now, at last, we say, he knows, he knows. 

The great lines of life come out in death, as the stars 
come out at night ; the stars whose mysterious, splendor 



THE REVELATIONS OF DEATH. 403 

we could never see while the sun was shining. The 
great principles of structure, which are divine and 
eternal, then are seen. This is why the old Latin said : 
" Speak no evil of the dead." We do not dare speak 
evil. Something good conies into relief. Something 
comes stealing in to say this or that of recognition. 
Friends, as they meet, recall an incident, a kindly word 
or gracious act. When Captain Hawdon lies dead, 
poor miserable Joe of Whitechapel, comes stealing in 
saying : " He were always good to me." Good to 
whom else, we may say? The memory grows green, 
as we treasure the old life. We see how little effect 
this change has had on it. The divine lines of life he- 
gin to emerge. 

Of old the people used to apotheosize their great 
ones, and as one after another of their kings and heroes 
disappeared they lifted him up into the godhead and 
worshipped him. The process has ceased now, and yet 
not ceased. We deify or dignify every one who disap- 
pears, because we see the divine essential quality of life, 
which we could not see in the daily life. They trouble 
us, they irritate us, they disappoint us, as we touch 
them. But by and by, when they withdraw into the 
silence, we see how incidental were these things, and 
the essential divine life stands out, and unconsciously we 
pay them the tribute of respect and of worship. Some 
little child, or some heart friend goes — of course, we 
ought to love them more and more ; but let us not love 
them so much as to forget that death is part of life and 
love can never lose its own. It is good to have known 
them, how good, even though they stayed but a few 
days, much more if they stayed for years. The pleasure 
and profit of knowing a human soul, who can estimate 
it ? And when they disappear from us, we say it was 
good to have walked with them the fields of earth; 



404 THE REVELATIONS OF DEATH. 

by and by I shall walk the fields of heaven with them 
in great converse. They shall not return to us, but we 
shall go to them. 



Our Father in Heaven, thou hast the gift of eternal 
life; all joy takes its quality from the happiness that 
is in thy bosom; all thought must start from thy 
thought ; all gladness or sorrow in life are but experi- 
ences sent by thee. And all success is but finding 
thy method and thy path. Help us to draw near to 
thee with humble hearts, praying for light to see our 
way clear; for strength to bear our pain; for sympa- 
thy one with another in all suffering. Give us a sense 
of the worth of this present moment. It is given us 
out of eternity in which to think thy thoughts, and to 
commune with thy spirit. We lift up hungry hearts 
to be filled with thy love. Fill them, O our Father, 
with the word of life. 

We bless thee for human hearts and the tenderness 
of their affection ; for human minds and the wealth of 
their thought. We are taught that each heart is not 
concerned simply about its own things, but also thinks 
about the things of others, and we rejoice together and 
weep together. We bless thee for the little children 
that come from God, who help to make gentle the 
touch, to soften the voice and sweeten the spirit. Even 
though our friends go away, we thank thee that they 
have been here. We thank thee for the christian hope 
that it shall be well with them ; that One wipes all 
tears from their eyes and no pain or sorrow comes to 
them. 

Now may the blessing of God, as it is in Jesus Christ 
our Lord, of a free and strong mind, of a glad and 
generous heart, of a whole and sound body, come to us 
all and abide with us. Amen. 



REJECTED OF MEN. 



REJECTED OF MEN. 



*' He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and ac- 
quainted with grief; and we hid as it were, our faces from him ; he 
ivas despised, and we esteemed him not. ' ' 

Isaiah liii, 3. 

' ' The stone which Hie builders rejected, the same is become the liead 
of the corner. ' ' 

Matthew xxi, 42. 

£S^HESE two texts, like two great rivers, blend in 
4m0 one mighty, silent current, along which great 
°-\5v thoughts roll. The first of them is taken from 
the familiar 53d of Isaiah. The book of Isaiah, which 
is one to us as we read it, is really two parts ; one writ- 
ten seven hundred years before Christ, and the other 
part, beginning with the 51st chapter, written about five 
hundred years before Christ by some one who is called 
by students " The Great Unknown." It is from these 
latter writings that this selection is taken. The allu- 
sion is commonly supposed to be made to the coming 
Jesus of Nazareth. It is not at all likely that there was 
any thought, or possible that there was any such 
thought, in the writer's mind. Around him were the 
ruins of his country. Its history had been one of slow 
growth, culminating in the wide conquests of David 
and the magnificence of Solomon ; and yet what ot 
-comfort, help, strength, and permanence had been 



410 REJECTED OF MEN. 

brought by the bravery of David or hj the splendor 
of Solomon ? Nothing at all. Men valued at that 
time the soldier and the royal splendor of the court.. 
They had brought no happiness to the people. They 
had known defeat and captivity and contempt of men. 
One must look elsewhere for salvation for a nation — for 
hope for the future. 

Looking down the centuries, he sees that oat of cer- 
tain despised and rejected qualities of human nature 
God can make, and he believes Grod will make, some 
strong world-helper; and yet not strong as a soldier is 
strong, not wielding intellect as a great force in the 
world, not with splendor of physical kingdom shall he 
come, but in a guise not recognized by men. He will 
come without display or splendor; without comeliness,, 
or that which attracts men. He shall have no such 
magnificence of kingdom as will attract a Queen of 
Sheba from afar. He will be one whom men shall de- 
spise and reject. They will see that his closest acquaint- 
ance is with sorrow and with grief. While men are 
wont to come to great world-helpers with their faces 
veiled from the glory, they shall not hide their face- 
from this one who comes unattractive of guise and 
with despised qualities. Yet in these despised qual- 
ities and by virtue of them, this coming man shall 
find his greatest influence. He shall see of the tra- 
vail of his soul, and shall be satisfied. He shall lift 
many from their troubles and tree many from their dis- 
tresses. He shall carry the sorrows of men upon his 
sympathetic heart ; and the cares and anxieties of men 
in his all-comforting love. Their very iniquities shall 
be laid upon him, he understanding all ; feeling their 
poignancy and suffering their consequences as none 
other could do. 

And as the centuries shall go on, these despised and 
rejected qualities which make the One who is coming 



REJECTED OF MEN 411 

despised and rejected, shall be seen to be the valued 
things of God ; the natural and the permanent elements 
of character; and that which was despised and rejected 
shall be accepted and valued. That in later times, five 
hundred years afterwards, there did come one in this 
guise, born in a stable, nourished by poor parents, 
without the privileges of education which the wealthy 
had, a carpenter's son and a carpenter himself, despised 
of men, met by antagonisms, surrounded by only a small 
circle of friends, none of whom understood him, the faces 
of men turned from him, their ingratitude his constant 
daily portion for benefits which he showered upon 
them, that, I say, was not in this man's mind; but 
rather that some one should come at some time in 
whom should be these great qualities. But when this 
one did come, fulfilling the unconscious prophecy, with a 
depth of insight which makes the human soul prophetic, 
then men recognized that here was one who fulfilled 
this ancient word, who filled it to the full; and so Jesus 
of Nazareth has been accepted by virtue of that as ful- 
filling the prophecy. It is larger, however, than that. 
It is the insistence that the great world-helping quali- 
ties are to be found among those that are usually de- 
spised and rejected of men. And the world-helpers 
whom we call the saviors have been always despised 
and rejected, from whom men turned their faces or 
upon whom they looked in contempt. 

It is not a little significant that just at this same time 
these words and thoughts were used by Plato when 
speaking to Glaucon of the archetypal or coming man. 
He said that for his very disinterestedness he should 
come to bonds and the scourge, and lastly to the cross 
itself, that he might show the qualities of strength, love, 
hope and justice. 

The second text brings to my mind an almost forgot- 
ten story — an old legend, I know not where I have read 



412 REJECTED OF MEN. 

it or when, to this effect : When the second Temple, the. 
most beautiful of the temples of the Jews, was building, 
the stone was dressed in the mountains of Lebanon, was 
brought to Jerusalem and laid one upon the other in reg- 
ular courses without the sound of hammer or the clink 
of trowel. Slowly the silent, beautiful building lifted 
itself. But among the stones which had been brought 
from Lebanon was one of such fantastic shape, of so 
many faces and angles, that it seemed to belong no- 
where ; as if it were the fantasy of some workman to 
see how strangely he might cut a piece of stone ; and 
as through years the temple went on building, this 
stone was rejected; grass grew over it; it was stum- 
bled over by the workmen, and had passed almost 
out of the memory, until at last, just as they had 
come to the eastern upper corner of the temple all 
work ceased because something was wanting which 
no one could find. Part did not come to part, nor 
could the architrave be stretched nor the roof be lifted. 
But one old workman remembered the quaint stone 
which had been lying there some thirty years, and it 
was brought out and redressed and lifted up, and part 
fitted into part, as it turned its many faces toward 
every other stone ; all things were put upon it, and as 
the people looked upon it taking its place in the corner 
of the beautiful temple, they shouted: "The stone 
which the builders rejected, the same has become the 
head of the corner." 

Now leaving these two old words for the time, let us 
take up the thought that I have already stated : That 
the permanent natural forces of the world, those which 
save it from destruction, those which help it in its 
weakness, are those ordinarily despised and rejected; 
and that the saviors and helpers of the world, those of 
the past and those of the present, have been and are 
yet to a certain extent among the despised and rejected. 



REJECTED OF MEN. 413 

Go where you will, the sacred places are the places 
where men despised and rejected lived, wrote and died. 
The tomb of Mohammed receives more pilgrims even 
than the Holy Land. Mohammed, a camel driver, hated 
by his people, was driven out from his home, and was 
believed in only by his faithful wife, Khadijah. We 
measure time from the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, the 
Moslem measures it from the flight of Mohammed. To 
us, as to them, the one despised and rejected has be- 
come the foundation or the crowning point of great 
thoughts and lives. 

In England, the most sacred place is the region where 
Shakespeare lived. One can well afford to pass by most 
other places and linger here. We drove by Charlcote 
Park, the home of Sir Thomas Lucy. You ask : " Who 
was Sir Thomas Lucy ? " Let us say that he at that time 
was Lord of the manor; and that Shakespeare was 
brought before him for killing one of his deer. All that 
has rescued Sir Thomas Lucy, lord of many acres and 
hundreds of deer, from oblivion, is the fact that once 
Shakespeare stood before him charged with killing deer. 
But for that, the name of Sir Thomas Lucy would have 
disappeared from the world. We drove past the Park. 
Sir Thomas Lucy, or those in his name, still watch their 
deer. Hundreds of them galloped across the sward, or 
were being shot at and sent to the London market. 
The same solicitude exists for his deer that did in the 
latter part of the sixteenth century, when Shakespeare 
was brought before him. But Shakespeare's birth- 
place, home and tomb are sacred places. Despised and 
rejected, a poor player and writer of plays, an outcast 
of society, has become one of* the world's great in- 
spirers. 

And certainly the first question which a stranger 
asks as he goes to Scotland is : " Where is the birth- 
place of Robert Burns, where did he live, where did he 



414 REJECTED OF MEN. 

write his poetry, and where is he buried ? " And the 
place is a sacred place, the ground is holy ground. 
Despised and rejected of men, patronized for a moment 
by a few wondering people of Edinburgh, but for the 
most part unnoticed, he fretted his life away and died 
while yet young. And now and for ages yet to come, his 
simple songs, springing from the heart, shall sing 
themselves into every mood of man's mind, and make 
him loved and honored, despite his frailties, which 
disappear like the little irritations and annoyances of 
life, and are gone when once we recognize the enduring 
qualities of the great life that was lived. 

By the dusty highway from Carlyle to Glasgow is 
Ecclefechan, where Carlyle was born and lies buried. 
Here was a man despised and rejected of men. For 
forty years he could get no man to hear him, noth- 
ing published, and no income. He waited, wondering 
what his call was of God in this world. Despised and 
rejected of men, he became the stone of the corner of 
literature; and being dead he yet speaks to every 
young man and woman who loves sincerity and truth ; 
and hates lies and an idle, useless life. 

You may go anywhere— wherever you will — and 
pick out those places. In St. Paul's, is Samuel John- 
son, the strange, quaint, great-hearted, loving man, 
who had charged himself with the sorrows of many 
forgotten people and who was loyal to his king and to 
his truth. He hated a lie and loved that which was just. 
And Chinese Gordon, who believed in God as very few 
men have believed in him, found no man to receive 
his work, and died, to the everlasting shame of Eng- 
land, deserted, despised and rejected. In Westminster 
Abbey lies Livingstone, the long-lost and neglected; 
and in the Poets' Corner are those despised and rejected 
of men who knew only poverty, who knocked vainly 
at the door of this or that patron, asking for a little 



REJECTED OF MEN. 415 

-sustenance as they went to their God-given, inspired 
work. You tread upon the pavement uuder which Oli- 
ver Goldsmith lies. You can go here and there; hut 
wherever you go, you know you are hunting for the 
•tombs of the despised and the rejected; those whom 
men passing by hid their faces from and saw in them 
•nothing of form or comeliness that they should desire 

Now these despised and rejected men we have 
adopted as the world's great helpers ; inspirers to 
noble thinking ; helpers to noble living ; singers of 
-songs for our tired and discouraged hours ; strength- 
ened for our weakness. Life in all its needs finds 
-somewhere among them something which helps it; 
and we make our unconscious appeal to them in the 
study or in the silence of thought or in the business of 
life — we think of them and their strength and go on 
again. 

The qualities which made them thus helpful are, as 
I have said, despised and rejected. They are the simple 
truth of speech and sincerity of action, justice of deal- 
ing, kindliness of motive and graciousness of action; 
the simple things which we find around us every day. 
They are not valued, because they are common ; they 
are not supposed to be enduring, but rather to disap- 
pear; yet they are a part of the nature of things. 
They are to be found through all time the same. 

The very elements, which this great unknown prophet 
saw were to enter into the helpful and enduring serv- 
ant of God, Plato saw in the archetypal man. Every 
great soul has tried to live them into his life; to 
portray them ; and by virtue of them has become 
strong and helpful and loved in a larger or smaller 
circle. Call them by what name you will, nourish 
them in what misery you may, let them worship in 
<what form they choose, it matters not. Mohammedan, 



416 REJECTED OF MEN. 

Buddhist, Confucian or Christian, it counts for noth- 
ing ; the same qualities are there that make character 
and that hroaden and beautify life. Characters de- 
spised and rejected, now seen dimly by us but to 
be revealed more and more clearly as the precious 
things of nature and of God. The precious natural 
things, goodness springing up out of nature, not 
dropped down out of heaven directly, but born with 
the soul as it is born, with its intuitions, its instincts, its- 
kindliness and natural sympathy — these things which 
are seen by us in little children, and which caused Jesus 
Christ to make a little child's intuition and love the very 
test and touch-stone of all life — these are the natural 
qualities of life. These natural qualities of life, which 
God has made just as free and common as his sunshine 
and his rain, are in every one's possession or lie within 
the range of every one's possibility. They are per- 
manent forces of society. They do not change with 
the years. They wax not old. They wear not thin. 
They lose not by fashion. They come not in anew. 
They are at all times and everywhere the permanent 
forces of society. What made a man good in olden 
time, as men counted goodness, makes men or women 
good now, as we count goodness. 

We find this quality among those that we know. We 
say of this man, " His word is a word of truth. His word 
is as good as his bond. I believe what he says. He is 
sincere in his motives. He is kind in his dealings with 
those who are unfortunate. He is considerate of the 
feelings of others. He is just in all the affairs of life." 
That is : the simple, natural, formative forces of God r 
despised and rejected through all history, have entered 
into this man's life and made him a good man. We 
call him the good neighbor. We did not know 
that these qualities that made him good were these 
initial forces of God. We did not know, perhaps r . 



REJECTED OF MEN. 417 

that these things were once despised and rejected; that 
kindness in a man was once thought to be a sign of 
weakness ; that justice was laughed at ; that truth was 
thought to he unnecessary. These were despised, I say, 
and rejected — counted of no worth. 

To this day no nation believes that truth is necessary 
between nations. Few persons believe that actual 
justice and fair dealing by men are just as much a part 
of God's nature as the law of gravitation ; that I 
might just as well hurl myself down a precipice, as 
to throw myself from the altitude of fairness and jus- 
tice and sincerity; that the crash, mutilation and 
physical destruction that would result in the one case 
is paralleled by the shock, broken tissues and spiritual 
destruction that follows in the other case. 

A man believes in his mother ; tells you there never 
was a better woman on earth than his mother. Not 
that he recognized this as a boy. Only in after years, 
as the duties and privileges of a parent come to him, 
then these overlooked, often despised and rejected qual- 
ities of his mother come up into his life ; and he recog- 
nizes what they were and what they were worth to 
him. Forgotten prayers come back to him and for- 
gotten kisses seem to be pressed upon his forehead — 
soothing words of hope and consolation. Again he is 
caught up and his sobbing ceases against her bosom. 
She believed in him when others did not believe in him ; 
she forgave him when others were hard. And these 
despised and rejected qualities of life, " feminine quali- 
ties," as they are called, once were not valued ; yet a 
man sees that all that is worth living for was in the 
mother that bore him. 

So a man says of his wife and believes in her. He 
trusts her; he comes with his troubles to her; she 
soothes and quiets him in her calm, reposeful way. 
That which gives strength to her spirit, that which 

27 



418 REJECTED OF MEN. 

gives a quiet repose to her touch and the stroke of her 
hand, are these despised and rejected qualities of life. 
That is all that this phrase means. We have brought 
it down the centuries, and it simply means this : Sin- 
cerity of motive, truth of speech, justice of action, 
kindliness of life, consideration for the feelings of 
others, the widest sympathy, the brightest hopes, the 
largest expectation for human good, the deepest devo- 
tion to others, the sense of duty and the willingness 
to die for it — all these, despised and rejected, have 
become more and more recognized as the valued, per- 
manent forces of the world. And the despised and 
the rejected men through all ages, from Jesus of Naza- 
reth to the last one that has died out of a family — a 
mother, a wife, a father, or a good neighbor, the de- 
spised and the rejected, the forgotten and the over- 
looked, the obscure and the unknown — these are God's 
men, God's women, God's saviors in this world. 



Teach us and help us to pray. All need to pray ; 
even little children, conscious of no need at all, provided 
for by fathers and by mothers, have need at least to thank 
thee. Grown men need to pray to thee for strength 
for daily work; because strong men grow weak and 
tired; hopeful men grow discouraged; the endeavors 
of life exhaust all strength ; the efforts of life take away 
hope. Many a weary head tosses hours on sleepless 
pillows, all its plans miscarried and its future darkened. 
Then such need to pray. Women need to pray — 
mothers, that they may have wisdom for their children, 
the solicitude of daily life, the anxiety to make the 
home happy and cheerful and to lead these little lives 
up into ways of righteousness, into manhood that is 



REJECTED OF MEN. 419 

strong and true, and womanhood that is gracious and 
tender and beautiful. The old can thank thee that 
their life is nearly done. They need little ; they have 
received much ; but they may ask thee that their last 
days may be their best days, as the sun after its glori- 
ous course sets in beaut}^. So we all need to pray. We 
may not voice this prayer. Words can not express it. 
Forms can not contain it. No ritual can grasp it. It 
is the silent attitude, the waiting of the soul before 
thee. The thirsty earth puts up no cry to thee — its 
thirst is its cry. The hungry child puts up no cry to 
thee — its hunger is its prayer. Our need is our prayer, 
our conscious need our deepest prayer; and it is thy 
spirit, invisible to us, in which we live and move and 
have our being, that simply reveals to us that our 
greatest wealth may be our greatest poverty, and that 
our time of greatest strength may stand next day to 
•our period of greatest weakness. So we ask that we 
may be conscious that in thee we live and move and 
have our being. 

Thine eye comprehends all things. Thy providence 
feeds all things in its universal lovingness. All things 
are fed by thee, nothing forgotten, no weakness passed 
•over, no obscure place unswept by thy searching eye. 
In this thought of an infinite providence and all- 
providing love, we rest and wait. We know not any- 
thing. We are like little children crying in the night. 
Our only language is a cry. We feel after thee if haply 
we may find thee, though we know thou art not far 
from any one of us. Thou art beside those that mourn, 
though they see thee not. Thou art beside those that 
are tempted, though they know thee not. Thou art 
beside those that do wrong, though they are not con- 
scious of thee — the strong, helpful, comforting God. 

And now, bless all who are here to-day, according to 
itheir need. We may not voice it or try to phrase it. 



420 REJECTED OF MEN. 

Each soul knows itself better than one can speak for it. 
Only make us want to live better and think better 
thoughts and do juster deeds and kindlier acts. So 
shall each day be our best day and we shall grow from 
strength to strength and from grace to grace, making 
each passing day a stepping stone by which we rise to 
better things. Bless all men, women and little children 
that are here to-day, those who are sick, those who are 
nursing them and ministering to them; bless those 
who are absent; bless the stranger who is visiting us 
and who finds here in his Father's house his rightful 
place. 

And may thy peace which passeth understanding, 
and thy joy which lifts ^11 burdens, be with us to-day r 
through Jesus Christ, our Lord. 



BURIAL SERVICE. 



BURIAL SERVICE. 



Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy 
name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, 
as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. 
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. 
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from 
evil : For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the 
glory, for ever. Amen. 



"Lead, kindly Light! amid th' encircling gloom, 

Lead thou me on ; 
The night is dark, and I am far from home, 

Lead thou me on ; 
Keep thou my feet ; I do not ask to see 
The distant scene ; one step enough for me. 

" I was not ever thus, nor prayed that thou 
Shouldst lead me on ; 
I loved to choose and see my path, but now 

Lead thou me on ; 
I loved the garish day, and spite of fears, 
Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years. 

* ' So long thy power has blessed me, sure it still 
Will lead me on 
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till 

The night is gone ; 
And with the morn those angel faces smile 
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile ! " 



424 BURIAL SERVICE. 

Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all gener- 
ations. 

Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever 
Thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from 
-everlasting to everlasting thou art God. 

Of old hast thou laid the foundations of the earth ; 
and the heavens are the work of thy hands. They 
«hall perish, but thou shalt endure ; they shall wax old 
like a garment, as a vesture shalt thou change them, 
and they shall be changed. 

But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no 
end. A thousand years in thy sight are but as yester- 
day when it is past, or as a watch in the night. 

Thou hast made our days as a hand-breadth, and our 
years are as nothing before thee. So teach us to num- 
ber our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wis- 
dom. 

Oh, satisfy us early with thy mercy, that we may 
rejoice and be glad all our days. 

Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy 
glory unto their children ; and let the beauty of the Lord 
our God be upon us, and establish thou the work of 
our hands upon us, yea, the work of our hands estab- 
lish thou it. 



Whither shall I go from thy spirit ? or whither shall 
I flee from thy presence ? 

If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there ; if I make 
my bed in the grave, behold, thou art there. 

If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the 
uttermost parts of the sea, 

Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right 
hand shall hold me. 



BURIAL SERVICE. 425 

If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me ; even the 
night shall be light about me ; 

Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee ; but the 
night shineth as the day. 

The darkness and the light are both alike to thee. 

How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God ! 
now great is the sum of them ! 

If I should count them, they are more in number 
than the sand; when I awake, I am still with thee. 



The Lord is my shepherd ; I shall not want. 

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures : He 
leadeth me beside the still waters. 

He restoreth my soul : He leadeth me in the paths 
of righteousness for his name's sake. 

Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow 
of death, I will fear no evil : for thou art with me ; thy 
rod and thy staff they comfort me. 



Blessed are the poor in spirit : for theirs is the king- 
dom of heaven. 

Blessed are they that mourn : for they shall be com- 
forted. 

Blessed are the meek : for they shall inherit the earth. 

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after 
righteousness : for they shall be filled. 

Blessed are the merciful : for they shall obtain mercy. 

Blessed are the pure in heart : for they shall see God. 

Blessed are the peace-makers : for they shall be called 
the children of God. 



426 BURIAL SERVICE. 

Let not your heart be troubled : ye believe in God y 
believe also in me. In my Father's house are man;y 
mansions : if it were not so I would have told you. I 
go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare 
a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto 
myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. And 
whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. I am 
the way, the truth, and the life. I will not leave you 
comfortless. I will come unto you. Yet a little while 
and the world seeth me no more ; but ye see me. Be- 
cause I live, ye shall live also. Peace I leave with you, 
my peace I give unto you. Let not your heart be 
troubled, neither let it be afraid. 

I am the Resurrection and the Life ; he that be- 
lieveth on me though he die, yet shall he live ; and who- 
soever liveth and believeth on me shall never die. This 
is life eternal, that they shall know thee, the only true 
God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou didst send. 

If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things 
which are above. Set your affection on things above,, 
not on things on the earth. For your life is hid with 
Christ in God. 

For I reckon that the sufferings of this present life 
are not worthy to be compared with the glory that 
shall be revealed in us ; while we look not at the things 
which are seen, but at the things which are not seen ; 
for the things that are seen are temporal, but the things 
that are not seen are eternal. 

And I heard a voice from heaven saying, Blessed 
are the dead which die in the Lord. They rest from 
their labors, and their works are following on after 
them. And God shall wipe away all tears from their 
eyes ; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, 
nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain ; for 
the former things are passed away. 



BURIAL SERVICE. 427 

1 ' What shall I do with all the days and hours 
That must be counted ere I see thy face? 
How shall I charm the interval that lowers 

Between this time and that sweet time of grace ? 

"I'll tell thee: for thy sake, I will lay hold 
Of all good aims, and consecrate to thee, 
In worthy deeds, each moment that is told 
While thou, beloved one, art far from me. 

"For thee, I will arouse my thoughts to try 

All heavenward flights, all high and holy strains ; 
For thy dear sake, I will walk patiently 

Through these long hours, nor call their minutes pains. 

1 ' So may this darksome time build up in me 

A thousand graces which shall thus be thine ; 
So may my love and longing hallowed be, 
And thy dear thought an influence divine." 



" Strong Son of God, immortal Love, 
Whom we, that have not seen thy face, 
By faith, and faith alone, embrace, 
Believing where we can not prove ; 

"Thou wilt not leave us in the dust: 
Thou madest man, he knows not why; 
He thinks he was not made to die ; 
And thou hast made him : thou are just. 

"Thou seemest human and divine, 
The highest, holiest manhood, thou : 
Our wills are ours, we know not how ; 
Our wills are ours, to make them thine. 



428 BURIAL SERVICE. 

"Our little systems have their day ; 
They have their day and cease to be : 
They are but broken lights of thee, 
And thou, O Lord, art more than they. 

* * In these ears, till hearing dies, 
One set slow bell will seem to toll 
The passing of the sweetest soul 
That ever looked with human eyes. 

" As sometimes in a dead man's face, 
To those that watch it more and more, 
A likeness, hardly seen before, 
Comes out — to some one of his race : 

"So, dearest, now thy brows are cold, 
I see thee what thou art, and know 
Thy likeness to the wise below, 
Thy kindred with the great of old. 

" But there is more that I can see, 
And what I see I leave unsaid, 
Nor speak it, knowing Death has made 
His darkness beautiful with thee. 

41 1 know that this was Life — the track 
Whereon with equal feet we fared ; 
And then, as now, the day prepared 
The daily burden for the back. 

41 But this it was that made me move 
As light as carrier-birds in air ; 
I loved the weight I had to bear, 
Because it needed help of Love. 

■* ' Be near us when we climb or fall : 
Ye watch, like God, the rolling hours, 
With larger, other eyes than ours, 
To make allowance for us all. 



BURIAL SERVICE. 429 J 

"How pure at heart and sound in head, 
With what divine affections bold 
Should be the man whose thought would hold 
An hour's communion with the dead. 

"In vain shalt thou, or any, call 
The spirits from their golden day, 
Except, like them, thou too canst say, 
My spirit is at peace with all. 

"O, yet we trust that somehow good 
Will be the final goal of ill, 
To pangs of nature, sins of will, 
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood ; 

1 ' That nothing walks with aimless feet ; 
That not one life shall be destroyed, 
Or cast as rubbish to the void, 
When God hath made the pile complete. 

" That life is not as idle ore, 
But iron dug from central gloom, 
And heated hot with burning fears, 
And dipped in baths of hissing tears, 
And battered with the shocks of doom 
To shape and use. 

" O living will that shalt endure 
When all that seems shall suffer shock, 
Rise in the spiritual rock, 
Flow thro' our deeds and make them pure. 

"That we may lift from out of dust 
A voice as unto him that hears, 
A cry above the conquer'd years, 
To one that with us works, and trust, 

" With faith that comes of self-control, 
The truths that never can be proved 
Until we close with all we loved, 
And all we flow from, soul in soul." 



430 BURIAL SERVICE. 

We have come here to-day, dear friends, to hold a serv- 
ice of thankful remembrance for the one who has been 
called away. We come as friends and so can talk heart 
to heart. We come as Christians, to look at death and 
life in the spirit of Jesus Christ. It is appointed unto 
all to enter into " the sanctuary of sorrow." Each heart 
to-day calls up some vanished form and holds com- 
munion with it. 

All that is tender and sweet and helpful to us has 
come to us from that which we have learned through 
sorrow. We do not know why it is, but we do know 
that it is, that everything that is sweet and helpful and 
beautiful in the world has grown out of graves and 
hearts that have kept watch over graves. All service 
for little troubled children has sprung like a beautiful 
flower out of some child's grave. All sympathy has 
come from hearts that have been wrung by some great 
agony. So we may be sure that it is out of the sorrow 
that is in the world that the helpfulness of the world 
has sprung. Therefore, we recognize in this one of 
the phases of God's own life and thought and work. 
Blessed, after all — blessed are they that mourn, for they 
shall be comforted, and they shall be a source of com- 
fort to others. 

Death still frightens us, and yet it is a part of the 
order of life. God does not seem to be troubled by it. 
Ought we to be ? When death rounds out a full life 
just as the evening rounds out a full day, and gives us 
the quiet, peaceful twilight, it seems natural. Little 
children play on in the presence of death. Motherless 
boys do not cease their games although they may be 
lonesome at heart. The business of the world goes on. 
Not a bird ceases its song. It is as though God said to 
us, " Let not your heart be troubled ; believe in me, 
through life and through death. This is a part of my 
Providence." 



BURIAL SERVICE. 431 

When death comes unforseen or comes in an unex- 
pected way, it gives us the most of heart trouble. Then 
•we follow those who leave us with agitated hearts, 
and with outstretched hands, calling to them to come 
back. 

We who are here to-day believe first of all in the 
spiritual life, that God is a spirit, and that life is spirit- 
ual, and we must believe that death is one of the changes 
which the spirit knows. Death is but freeing the spirit 
from the body which shuts it in. The beautiful soul 
leaves its casket. The immortal spirit finds its release. 
It is this faith, and this alone, that sustains us. This 
was the belief of Jesus who treated life and death in the 
same way, using them almost interchangeably. To 
him life was always the belief in the eternal and the 
doing of that which was right. He said, "Because I 
live, ye shall live also." 

Life is something that did not begin when we came 
into this world and it will not cease when we leave it. 
It underlies all the changes of form and face. It is the 
spirit which gives beauty to men and women and the 
fine quality to their lives and makes us love them. It 
is this spirit that looks out through the eyes and that 
speaks through the voice and thrills through the touch. 
It is this spirit that loves and hopes and joys and tri- 
umphs. Subtle and mysterious, it takes possession of 
.us at birth and leaves us at what we call death. We 
rightly say of those that love, how like God they are ; 
they have been made in the image of God ; how beau- 
tiful God must be who can create such beautiful souls. 

God hides away many lives spent so quietly, so un- 
obtrusively, that they give no sign. But they make a 
fragrance in the air. Yesterday as I passed along the 
street, suddenly the wind brought to me the breath of 
fresh wild flowers. I knew not where they were, nor 
whence came this sweet breath ; enough to know that 



432 BURIAL SERVICE. 

somewhere in the quiet, unseen and unknown, a flower 
was sending out its God-given fragrance. So across 
our path as we do our work and walk our way, as we 
attend to our business and go to our duties, suddenly 
we become conscious of the fragrance of a beautiful life. 
Such die, but they go to make up the choir invisible. 
Their lives are fragments of the true cross of Jesus 
Christ. They are part of that life which he lived in 
the earth. 

The length of days in this earth we do not know. 
We do but pray with the psalmist : " So teach us to 
number our days that we may apply our hearts unto 
wisdom." God does not measure life by length of 
days, but by intensities. '!No life may be called incom- 
plete. Even a little child that has lingered but for a 
few days, has left a memory that becomes a power r 
that goes on and on forever. We know that the mem- 
ory of a little child's word and loving touch can bind 
a strong man to duty and faithfulness. The song of a 
bird is a light, flitting thing, but it has strengthened 
the heart of many a traveler and renewed his effort 
and sent him toward his home. The life, be the years 
few or many, or even measured by days, we must feel 
in the order of God's providence, has fulfilled its mis- 
sion, has rounded itself out in the intensity of its 
action and in the endurance of its influence. 

Our spirits visit each other and we call that friend- 
ship. The bonds which bind heart to heart we know 
as love. All the fine relations between souls are the 
relations of love. A little child wins us to himself, 
and a growing boy and a graceful girl compel our in- 
terest and admiration, and it seems natural to us that 
such should live on and on forever. But as life goes 
on, the soul enters into deeper and more permanent 
and tender relations ; and the deepest of all is that be- 
tween wife and husband. This is the purest form 



BURIAL SERVICE. 433 

which love takes. It is disinterested, it is unselfish 
and it is complemental. Each has something which 
the other lacks. Each exchanges that which he has 
for that which the other has, and they two make one. 
We recognize this spiritual quality in each other and 
it is this which survives all changes of fortune. What 
is it that endures, says the apostle — not knowledge, not 
prophesies, not wisdom — only faith and hope and love ; 
the conviction of righteousness, the hope of better 
things, and the tender love which shows itself in serv- 
ice — these survive all changes. These are spiritual 
qualities that do not belong to the body as such, but 
they inhere in the soul as part of its original endow- 
ment. 

It is at such a time as this that we realize what 
Christian faith and friendship mean. We know that 
all that is good in us we owe to the Christ The quali- 
ties which make him loved by the world are those 
which make us loved by each other. We move for- 
ward to the same great event. We are held in the 
same strong, everlasting arms. It is not what we have 
as accidents of possession that endear us to each other, 
and it is not what we know as the incidents of experi- 
ence, but it is because some one has found something 
in us worthy of love and trust and confidence. 

We sorrow but not as those who have no hope. We 
believe in the immortal life. We believe in him 
who said : " Because I live ye shall live also." 
All beautiful souls are God's finger posts point- 
ing to the immortal life. They are God's light-houses 
shining out over life's troubled sea. Let us pitch the 
ideals of life high, that as we have kept them company 
in the earthly life, we may be worthy to keep them 
company in the heavenly. Let us be faithful to life's 
duties, loyal to life's friendships, helpful to those 
that need, considerate and pitiful to those that 

28 



434 BURIAL SERVICE. 

suffer, tender to those that are weak — for at such 
a time it is never our helpfulness and love and 
sympathy that we regret, but always the absence of it 
and that we did not tell it and show it. 

Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. They rest 
from their labors and their life's work follows on after 
them. 



"It singeth low in every heart, 

We hear it each and all — 
A song of those who answer not, 

However we may call. 
They throng the silence of the breast ; 

We see them as of yore— 
The kind, the true, the brave, the sweet, 

Who walk with us no more. 

" 'Tis hard to take the burden up, 

When these have laid it down : 
They brightened all the joy of life, 

They softened every frown. 
But, oh ! 'tis good to think of them 

When we are troubled sore ; 
Thanks be to God that such have been, 

Although they are no more ! 

' ' More home-like seems the vast unknown 

Since they have entered there ; 
To follow them were not so. hard, 

Wherever they may fare. 
They can not be where God is not, 

On any sea or shore ; 
What'er betides, thy loves abides, 

Our God, for evermore." 



BURIAL SERVICE. 435> 

" Those who are gone from you, you have. Those 
who departed loving you, love you still and you love 
them always. They are not really gone, those dear 
hearts and true; they are only gone into the next room 
and you will presently get up and follow them — and 
yonder doors will close upon you and you will be no 
more seen." 



Our Father in Heaven, to whom should we come but 
unto thee ? From thee we take our life, and to thee we 
give it again. Thou hast been good to us through all 
the days and years of life's endeavor and struggle. We 
can not doubt thee. We can not understand things ; 
but we do not lose our confidence in thee. Thy good- 
ness has always been with us. Thou hast made this 
beautiful earth our home. Thou hast filled it full of 
those that love us, and that find in us something 
worthy to love. We come to thee. Thine eternity is 
not like our time ; and thy years not like our years. 
We spend our days as a tale that is told ; but the meas- 
ure of thy years is eternity. We come here for a little 
time, as little, weak children ; and we make our appeal 
to the strong, and they care for us. 

As we grow older and learn to run alone and think 
alone, we grow into deeper friendships; something 
within us working out into other hearts who love us. 
As we grow yet older circles of friendship expand and 
expand, until at last there are many who call us friends. 
And yet we must stand alone, each building a character 
in silence and sorrow. In this struggle and endeavor of 
life, thou makest us to learn self-control and self-pos- 
session. We gain a control of things that are in the 
earth, and grow strong and true and faithful and loyal 
and just and tender. And yet we are not alone. Thou 



436 BURIAL SERVICE. 

bast made us to love each other, and knitted us close 
together, heart to heart, in the varied relationships of 
life. 

Then death comes — one of thine angels — and takes 
away a little child or a dear friend or a helpmate ; and 
we stand and wonder. We can not understand ; we can 
only trust. We are like the child of the desert who 
says, " I am dumb, because thou hast done it." 

But we do not distrust thee. Everything is good in 
this earth, and everything shall make for good. We 
can not understand in a short life the immense heart 
and providence of God. It is enough for us to know 
that he knows the way he takes. He marks out the 
path our feet must tread. 

We have learned many of our lessons in life at such 
a time as this. We would fain escape this. On the 
pages of life's book, we would not express a desire that 
we should have a sorrow or feel a pain or know a weak- 
ness. But, as we look back over life, we say we can 
not miss anything that has been sent us. All takes its 
part and place in the education of the soul ; and so we 
know it must be good. We realize that we can help 
only as we have been helped. We can express sym- 
pathy only as we have felt sorrow. We can lift up that 
which is weak only as we have conquered some temp- 
tation. And so we know if we are to be helpful at all 
in this world of mingled sunshine and shadow, sorrow 
and joy, we must know some sorrow and bear some 
pain. But we realize yet more than this, in the world 
that is beyond, without the limitations of this, there 
shall be no sorrow, or pain, or struggle, or tears, or 
anything that defiles or troubles, or makes a lie ; so we 
wait and work in hope. 

We thank thee for the faith we have through Jesus 
Christ in the immortal life. He made death's darkness 
appear beautiful, as he went down into it. The way to 



BURIAL SERVICE. 437 

death has not been a dark path since then ; and all the 
shining of beautiful souls of little children and of 
grown men and women, as they have gone down, have 
made yet more luminous this pathway, that was once 
so dark. So that the Valley of the Shadow of Death, 
has become lighted a little and filled full of voices. We 
are not afraid. Thou art our shepherd; and thou wilt 
lead us, and fold us at last in heavenly places. Only, 
we ask for strength and hope and courage to bear what 
we have to bear, and endure the long, silent years. 
Thou wilt sing songs in the night. Thou wilt whisper 
comfort. Thou who hast made the heart wilt strengthen 
it. We bless thee for the little children that we 
have, and for the families in which we are set. We 
thank thee for our friendships. We bless thee for 
our memories. Thank God we have these, and that 
they can not be obliterated. Be the years few or many, 
Ave bless thee that we have known them ; and though 
lost to sight and touch and hearing, they live in thee 
and their life goes on in us. 

Help us to trust thee and to grow strong. The 
hours of time that yet remain may be filled full of use- 
fulness. We may complete that which seems incom- 
plete, and do the work that would have been done by 
those whom thou hast called to be with thee. 

And bless those who are left — all the dear fellowship of 
friends, brothers, sisters — all those who come into the 
closest earthly relationships. May the memory of their 
friend be with them through long days, still lingering 
on and on, like a sunset which leaves us quiet and 
passive, thoughtful and better. 

May we love one another and be good to one an- 
other while yet living. Vain are the words we would 
speak into the ears of the dead. Vain are the com- 
forts and the consolations and the strength we would 
give them. While yet men and women are around us 



438 BURIAL SERVICE. 

living, let us do for them the thing we would have 
done, and speak to them the word we would like to 
have spoken, and show them the love for which their 
hearts hunger. 

May the peace of God, which passeth all understand- 
ing, keep our hearts and minds through the knowledge 
and love of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 



THE END. 



im 



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